[HN Gopher] Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown
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Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown
Author : __Joker
Score : 255 points
Date : 2022-10-18 09:14 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| alexk307 wrote:
| It seems silly to measure short term success in an industry known
| for "notoriously cyclical" booms and busts. The size of the
| investment needed to create these manufacturing plants in the US,
| coupled with the complexity and time it takes to build them,
| combines perfectly for articles like this.
|
| I can't think of a reason that on-shoring chip fabs would be a
| bad thing for the US - other than the vague threat of China
| retaliating. Cutting off foreign dependencies in high-tech
| industries would surely be beneficial in the long term.
| lvl102 wrote:
| Intel messed up big time and I hate to see the US govt dump more
| money on incompetence. They are failing their way to success.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I have some bitter taste about that myself. First they
| offshore[1] to anywhere, but US, but the moment US makes it
| geopolitically risky, US recompenses Intel by offering massive
| incentives to re-shore. It is maddening. The worst part is,
| making chips is actually hard so there is a good and valid
| reason to actually do it, but I just hate rewarding bad
| behavior ( from US taxpayer's perspective ).
|
| [1]https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-apr-07-fi-
| intel...
| iancmceachern wrote:
| It's the people, the talent, the knowledge that drives any
| industry like this.
|
| The US government, US, we, gave Intel and some other companies a
| huge sum of money to stay awesome.
|
| Then they announce huge layoffs to get rid of a lot of thr
| talent, people, heart of their business.
|
| So, wouldn't we have been better off as a society of we had just
| offered thT CHIPs money as a startup find and asked a bunch or
| people from Intel to leave and build new semi companies using
| this fund?
|
| In the end the meteic for success of the CHIPs program in the
| short term should be number of people working in semi in the US.
| How did we dedicate money and resources to this thing of national
| importance and end up with fewer experts working on it?
|
| Money is the root of all evil, power corrupts us all.
| [deleted]
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Targeted layoffs might be the best thing long-term.
|
| From my limited perspective of having recently worked at Intel,
| they had a _lot_ of dead weight. There was a lot of talent, but
| it was also diluted by a lot of management and bureaucracy.
|
| I honestly don't know if layoffs are an effective solution to
| this, but IMHO they could definitely benefit from lower
| headcount and greater urgency.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Thanks for this. I see that perspective and from my
| experience in larger tech corps it jibes.
|
| I'm still trying to reconcile it with the CHIPs thing. Intel
| on one hand is admittedly bloated and inefficient, and so is
| choosing to reduce its headcount and therefore bandwidth to
| do work.
|
| So what is the CHIPs money going to. Typically when you
| invest in something like this you are buying people's time to
| do the work and also materials and supplies to build the
| stuff like factories, etc. So if we are lowering headcount
| it's not going to labor.
|
| I suspect as you say it's more about changing worker types,
| like getting rid of skillsets they don't need so they can
| hire those they do like people to build semi plants here.
|
| So, in my mind, the only way it adds up is if Intel goes on a
| big hiring spree soon. Otherwise, where did the money go? We
| can buy equipment to build plants but who builds them?
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I don't have any insider info on this, but here's my guess:
|
| Gelsinger thinks x86's days are numbered. So Intel's
| historical moat of designing _and_ manufacturing x86 chips
| is going away.
|
| So now it's more compelling to treat design and
| manufacturing as _separate_ business concerns:
|
| - For potential foundry customers, it reduces fears that
| Intel will give higher priority to fab'ing its own chips.
|
| - It frees Intel's chip designers to design chips without
| needing to assume they'll be built at Intel's foundries.
| E.g., they can design chips for TSMC's process if that
| would result in a better product.
|
| And given all these factors, I suspect Gelsinger and the
| Intel board of directors are planning to separate the
| design and manufacturing functions into separate
| businesses. (Either practically speaking by limiting their
| interaction within Intel, or literally by making them
| separate companies.)
| ragingroosevelt wrote:
| This matches what I've heard about Intel from friends who
| have worked there. I had a firmware programmer friend who's
| job was literally to copy data from excel files to .h files
| and when he offered to automate the process was told that the
| manual transfer was the process he should follow. He
| described his role as dead weight.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| A friend that also worked at Intel until a couple of years
| ago confirmed what you say.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| well-connected one-percent chick goes to work for Intel
| Security long enough to get health care for babies then
| quits. At the same time, competitive University grad-with-
| honors working class girl does protests and environmentalism,
| can't have children with no health care, ends up hanging out
| with lots and lots of other thirty year olds in the same
| boat, with debt. Just another day in America.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| But what did they major in? Did the well connected person
| major in CS while the honors grad major in underwater
| basket weaving? We are in a free market system that is not
| perfect at evaluating talent but things like degree help
| provide signals to employers.
| dumpsterlid wrote:
| Yah great point, the US culturally seems to really struggle
| with the idea that the business is just an arbitrary
| conception, what is important is the _workers_. We really have
| a disturbing sense that arbitraries collections of capital and
| legalese are more important than humans with passions and
| skills and it honestly scares me.
| kragen wrote:
| Yeah, it's amazing the number of people who believe that
| corporations exist in the same objective sense that puppies
| do, rather than the social-consensus sense that D&D
| characters do.
| teawrecks wrote:
| So far the rumor is that they're laying off marketing folks,
| not engineers. And we paid them to expand their microchip
| infrastructure, not create jobs.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Thanks for this. I'm curious to dig a bit deeper. What is
| involved in expanding their microchip infrastructure? What
| would funds be spent on? It seems like hard tooling,
| buildings, fab lines, and then they need people to build
| install and run all that stuff. I guess I'm asking - am I
| missing something, like can they expand their microchip
| infrastructure without the labor of people? In my experience
| designing automation for fabs there is a ton of skilled labor
| that goes into every single fab, both to design and set it up
| but also to run it.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Every business I have started or contemplated starting has
| always relied 100% on the people needed to run it.
| Otherwise, nothing happens.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| We honestly should nationalize intel, raytheon, boeing, and
| lockheed martin. Probably others too. It makes no sense to
| develop our sensitive technology and reserve some resources
| solely to feed the parasite that is the profit margin.
| formercoder wrote:
| No thanks, I've been to the DMV
| datavirtue wrote:
| The DMV isn't a chip factory. It is an administrative
| office performing unskilled work. Most of which has been
| automated away.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| You mean like they did in communist countries and had a huge
| success at killing their economies?
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| I was thinking more along the lines of when the us
| government centrally planned the economy and won a world
| war as a result.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Why wouldn't the government just start up it's own Intel-
| alike?
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Because intel would lobby against it and snuff it
| beambot wrote:
| What makes you think the government could run them better...?
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| You could run them exactly how they are structured today if
| you want. Youd reap savings by not having shareholder
| profits to maintain and could use that money that would
| otherwise be wasted on luxury spending for major
| shareholders for more R and D.
| hardware2win wrote:
| >How did we dedicate money and resources to this thing of
| national importance and end up with fewer experts working on
| it?
|
| How do you even know whos going to be fired?
| ren_engineer wrote:
| >short term should be number of people working in semi in the
| US
|
| it's not a jobs program and majority of the layoffs are
| targeting non-technical areas. Raw number of engineers isn't a
| great metric for government programs either, could be easily
| gamed. Focus should be on building up the ground level
| infrastructure needed so actual innovation can happen, not just
| giving money to Intel and other established players to further
| strengthen their monopoly
| ac29 wrote:
| > Then they announce huge layoffs to get rid of a lot of thr
| talent, people, heart of their business.
|
| Intel has not announced layoffs. There is a _rumor_ layoffs
| will be announced at the next quarterly earnings release.
| bee_rider wrote:
| The knowledge and talent is definitely very important (I mean
| in the long term everything in technology is knowledge and
| talent) but there are also the extremely expensive
| semiconductor fabs to be considered.
|
| The CHIPs bill was pretty broad. It might make sense to
| subsidize a pure-foundry company as an ongoing issue (in
| particular, isolate these big investments from the boom-bust
| semiconductor trends). Or somehow try to come up with subsidies
| that go to Intel to the extent to which they act as a pure
| foundry, but that will be pretty tricky to work out I guess.
|
| An ecosystem of open fabs seems to be a prerequisite of those
| small plucky startup chip design teams. Of course they can
| order from TSMC but then they have to wait however many weeks
| to test out each prototype...
| chatterhead wrote:
| 1) We need chip manufacturing to be nationalized in the USA - if
| it's that important to national security we don't need to leave
| it in the hands of private industry.
|
| 2) Taiwan is not China. We are going to break the rest of China
| up because Xi decided to consolidate power instead of steward the
| distributed power he inherited.
|
| 3) The USA isn't in trouble at all; we will expand our
| industries, inflate our currency and strengthen it so demand
| globally grows as Russia, EU and China falter.
|
| 4) China took HK almost 3 decades early so why should anyone
| believe their word on territorial respect.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Nationalization is the innovation killer. Works in mature
| industries, but not something like semis which require big
| risks.
| datavirtue wrote:
| You can nationalize an entire sector and have the various
| companies (units?) compete with each other....still. Lack of
| imagination kills innovation.
| _trackno5 wrote:
| > 1) We need chip manufacturing to be nationalized in the USA -
| if it's that important to national security we don't need to
| leave it in the hands of private industry
|
| I generally agree with you that countries should have control
| over strategic industries (e.g., oil), but I'm not sure if
| nationalisation is the way to go.
|
| I feel like that serves more to scare off investors than
| anything else. The way the US is going about it feels more
| correct to me: give fiscal and financial incentives for these
| strategic resources to be built and managed inside the country,
| while also removing incentives for too many exports
| chatterhead wrote:
| If you believe oil should be then so should all energy;
| including the entirely government created "alternative
| energy" industry.
|
| Investors will be scared of the US nationalizing specific
| strategic industries but not the changing political winds of
| foreign nations? I don't think so.
| _trackno5 wrote:
| I don't understand your comment. You seem to believe
| because I stated something it means that I'm denying
| something else.
|
| If clean energy sources are strategic, yeah the US should
| do the work to protect its ability to utilise it regardless
| of it being oil, solar, wind, nuclear. Doesn't mean the
| state needs to own those ventures, just that they should
| put in the effort to fund investment and growth in
| strategic areas.
| chatterhead wrote:
| Not understanding is an act of willful ignorance.
| bouncycastle wrote:
| Related: There is a massive TSMC factory being built in Japan
| right now. Take a look at the pictures, I've never seen this many
| cranes at one location:
|
| https://www.nhk.jp/static/assets/images/newblogposting/ts/7P...
|
| https://cdn-cw-english.cwg.tw/ckeditor/202205/ckeditor-628ae...
|
| It looks like a forest of cranes...
| tgtweak wrote:
| To be perfectly honest, this is still within a 1000km radius
| circle that encompasses Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. That
| covers the majority of next-generation fabs that aren't Intel.
|
| It's great to legally diversify these fabs, but it does very
| little to mitigate geopolitical issues that are brewing in and
| around the east china sea.
| nscalf wrote:
| How does it do little to diversify these fabs? The current
| situation is that if China invades Taiwan, the entire Western
| world is compelled to engage militarily over Taiwan's high
| end chip fabs. It cannot be overstated how much we depend on
| that, if TSMC operates in other countries, we don't HAVE to
| engage in WW3.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Em... I doubt that semiconductor industry is the thing to
| lead us to WW3.
| nscalf wrote:
| If Taiwan is taken off the board for semiconductors, or
| if all semiconductors have to go through China, that
| means the entire US military (and _all_ western
| militaries) are dependent on a geopolitical rival. To
| allow that would be nothing short of giving away the
| game.
| patentatt wrote:
| This is what I don't get. I thought military and
| aerospace used decades old cpu designs on decades old fab
| technology for the radiation hardness? Not saying they
| couldn't benefit from an upgrade, but it's not like
| Lockheed is putting Nvidia GPUs in fighter jets, right?
| It doesn't seem like a deal breaker to use a 14nm node
| compared to a '5nm' node (or whatever is the latest TSMC
| process). Seems like a weird line to draw in the sand to
| me. Frankly, seems like the only applications which are
| make or break on EUV lithography are all gaming related.
| Am I that off base here? Certainly prices would rise, and
| critical supply chains would have to be remade, and there
| would be no more iPhones, but seems like we'd get by just
| fine for a few years before catching back up and then
| likely surpassing Taiwan. And it's not like the real
| brains behind TSMC would willingly help a Chinese
| controlled takeover, and add on a new layer of corruption
| and bureaucracy, and in a few years TSMC is irrelevant
| anyways. And don't forget, TSMC is reliant on ASML, who
| certainly wouldn't be shipping any more EUV lithography
| equipment to a Chinese controlled Taiwan.
| nscalf wrote:
| I think that's true for some key components of the
| military, but for example, anything involving AI systems
| necessitate cutting edge chips. You can probably look to
| the effect chip shortages had on car manufacturers to see
| how much of this likely works. Cars manufacturing wasn't
| entirely halted in most cases, instead they had
| downgraded functionality. Less automatic windows, more
| window cranks. The totality of every military system
| isn't based off high end chips, but some of it certainly
| is.
| [deleted]
| patmorgan23 wrote:
| There are advanced Fabs in Israel, Intel and TSMC are
| both building next gen Fabs in Arizona. It's not like
| Twain is the only place with advanced chip fabs(though
| yes the vast majority of the capacity is there and IIRC
| thats where their latest process nodes are but I don't
| think the military is dependent on those absolute cutting
| edge process nodes)
| nscalf wrote:
| I agree that this isn't an indefinite problem, but the
| current state of affairs is that TSMC is irreplaceable on
| the world's fabrication scene. The military definitely
| has some need for cutting edge process nodes, though I
| can't say how much. This is intentionally vague, but it
| seems safe to say there are a number of high end missile
| guidance systems, a variety of AI implementations, and
| drone systems that likely all have some dependence on
| high end chips. Not to mention the economic reliance on
| TSMC, Apple alone is ~7% of the S&P500.
|
| I think if we fast forward 5-10 years, Taiwan will not be
| this much of an absolute, but it will take years for
| these new fabs to come online. Until there are viable
| alternatives, Taiwan is a massive risk.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| Taiwan is also the center of a lot of specialist
| equipment (not the big swiss-watch ASML machines, but
| stuff like wafer transports, cleanroom gear, etc.) and
| consumables (chemicals, bunny suits, etc.). I don't know
| how extensive and fragile that ecosystem is but I live in
| eastern Michigan and it seems like every small to midsize
| town has some tiny automotive supplier that is somehow
| still in business even while the big plants have moved
| on. I suspect this is largely because they have no
| competitors and it is specialist work that doesn't really
| scale (meaning there is only so much of this work to go
| around, even if global auto sales 10x) so no one is
| really motivated to compete either. The result is that
| the GM and Ford plants leave the country, but still rely
| on a relatively small set of expertise and tooling that
| only exist in the rust belt. Presumably, a thorough
| nuking of the Midwest would (in addition to lots of other
| unpleasant effects, like the death and famine millions,
| perhaps billions) at least require the pause of the
| majority of auto manufacturing around the globe. Assuming
| people still wanted cars after such an event, it could be
| recovered, but it would take time.
|
| I got a little carried away with the Michigan analogy,
| but IMO it doesn't go far enough: Taiwan is far more
| integral to the global semiconductor industry than
| Detroit is to the global auto industry.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Those fabs won't start producing for years.
| etempleton wrote:
| It is not just about semiconductors. It is about pride.
| Taiwan shows another way for China that is not the PRC
| just as Hong Kong did. Taiwan is not just a separatist
| state, it is a successful separatist state. The better
| Taiwan does the worse the PRC looks. Semiconductors are
| just another gut punch. Why can't mainland China do what
| tiny Taiwan has done?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I think you underestimate the dependency of all modern
| economy on semiconductor industry.
|
| I honestly think there is 100% chance that if China
| invaded Taiwan today, the US would declare war and send
| troops to defend Taiwan. In contrast, I think there is
| >0% chance that the US would _not_ declare war on Russia
| if they did a (tactical) nuclear attack in Ukraine.
| rat87 wrote:
| No you massively overestimate the importance of economics
| or semiconductor industry. Whatever will happen to Taiwan
| has nothing to do with Chips.
|
| For China it's about nationalism, for US it's about
| protecting allies/upholding treaties and protecting
| democracy from the strongest authoritarian regime. Chips
| are not important. After all chances are high they might
| be destroyed even in a successful defense of Taiwan.
|
| As a Ukranian American I wish we had and were doing more
| for Ukraine but it's not about chips or economics.
| Ukraine had only recently grown closer to the US. The US
| has promised to defend Taiwan for a long time (well sort
| of, arguably the US does keep some strategic ambiguity
| about this which might let it wiggle out)
| l33t233372 wrote:
| The US is really not _that_ interested in protecting
| democracy from authoritarian regimes. If we were, we'd
| have boots on the ground in many African states.
|
| While upholding treaties is vitally important, I think
| you're underestimating the importance of chips(a rare
| occurrence on HN!).
|
| Wars are generally fought over resources rather than
| ideas, and pretending that US is defending Taiwan to
| defend democracy instead of defending its strategic
| interests (access to vital resources -- chips) is
| misguided.
| nscalf wrote:
| I don't know where you got the idea that the US will not
| go to war to protect the US economy, national security,
| or military capacity, but you are severely
| misunderstanding the situation. That is why the military
| exists. We spend the amount we do on the military to
| support American economic dominance and define the rules
| on how world trade happens. The reason we are not doing
| more for Ukraine is because they are not very important
| to the US, outside of being a buffer against Russia.
|
| Ideas like "protecting democracy" are used to sell
| citizens on wars they don't care about. The full
| destruction of TSMC is likely preferred over a Chinese
| dictated world technological economy. The truth is, if
| one side has TSMC chips and the other doesn't, what we're
| talking about may necessitate a total war.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > For China it's about nationalism, for US it's about
| protecting allies/upholding treaties and protecting
| democracy from the strongest authoritarian regime.
|
| I doubt this is true for China (I very much suspect
| economic concerns trump any other concerns for them as
| well), but I am quite convinced you are wrong about the
| USA - one of the biggest supporters of non-democratic
| regimes in the world. There is little in US history to
| suggest they have any preference for a democratic regime
| over a subservient autocratic one. They are also
| extremely clearly uncaring of international treaties.
|
| And make no mistake: the USA is coordinating Ukraine's
| defense because it sees it as a good chance to weaken
| Russia, not out of some deep care for the people of
| Ukraine.
| ecshafer wrote:
| I wish I could remember the origin of this. But a quip on
| this idea I had read was along the lines of "If China
| invaded Taiwan and Kansas, the US would send troops to
| Taiwan first". Whether you want to call Taiwan an ally, a
| protectorate, vassal or whatever your political
| standpoint would dictate, the US is very protective of
| Taiwan.
| rat87 wrote:
| Yes but not because of the chips
| l33t233372 wrote:
| Because of what, then?
| [deleted]
| xwolfi wrote:
| But you underestimate our ability to downsize, turn
| around and build them locally on a 5-year horizon, and
| our ability to backtrack tensions anyway if we re
| reaching a nuclear point.
|
| We will give Ukraine to Russia if we can save Paris.
| nosianu wrote:
| > _We will give Ukraine to Russia if we can save Paris._
|
| Only that you just taught the already aggressive ruling
| elite of a huge country with an abundance of resources
| who don't care about anyone including their own except
| that they need them for work and for the fighting that
| threatening use of nukes gets them anything they want.
| Moldova next - it's not EU or NATO, already very low risk
| for Russia, if they can get there. Which was (is) a
| stated goal for the current war, to get the entire south
| of Ukraine to take away their sea ports and to get to
| Moldova.
|
| They'll try the Baltic states next. Not a full invasion,
| just lots of little aggressive actions. Even previously
| they did murders in the EU, financing of radical parties
| out to undermine current EU country governments,
| supported by propaganda. I don't know how much it
| actually influenced US elections, but I think it's save
| to say they at least tried.
|
| Giving them Ukraine will be _massive_. They will also
| have lots more of the oil and gas reserves under Ukraine
| and around the Krim. They will also get tens of millions
| of new citizens, lessening the problems of a shrinking
| number of people available inside Russia significantly.
| There also are significant parts of former USSR
| production in Ukraine, which will all go to Russia. They
| will also own even more of the prime agricultural lands
| of Eastern Europe, which at least so far seems to suffer
| less than Western Europe (look at the heat maps of this
| summer) under climate change so it may become even more
| valuable than it already is. The land is some prime real
| estate - unlike Siberia, Ukraine is much better, you can
| 't look at the map and think "it does not add all that
| much to Russia" because the value of Ukraine lands is
| much higher.
|
| I have no idea how you get this idea. Giving up Ukraine
| is really, really massive in its long term consequences,
| greatly strengthening Russia directly as well as showing
| them that the means they use actually work. This would be
| a gigantic loss for the West.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I think there is little chance Russia could successfully
| occupy and hold Ukraine. Look at the US's utter failure
| to do the same in Afghanistan, despite vastly more
| resources and some significant popular support.
| ewzimm wrote:
| This is a good comment, but rather than tens of millions
| of new citizens, they would get tens of millions of new
| insurgents. Nearly the whole population of Ukraine is
| involved in the war effort in some way, and it would be
| impossible to break this completely. The only thing that
| could be given to Russia with the conquest of Ukraine is
| the option to turn into Afghanistan instead of North
| Korea.
| nosianu wrote:
| > _they would get tens of millions of new insurgents._
|
| I doubt it. Most people will be passive and will just
| live their lives. They will get a few for sure, but they
| won't be able to do all that much. It's not like the
| ruling elite cares if there's an occasional killing,
| after all, they already use that method themselves, see
| the list of Russian businessmen and manager deaths.
| ewzimm wrote:
| Not everyone would be involved in directly fighting, but
| there are intelligence networks, supply networks,
| opportunities for discreet sabotage and falsifying
| critical data, and many other ways that people can
| support a resistance movement that would continue even in
| a fully occupied Ukraine.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| Why not?
|
| Don't semiconductors represent a significant military
| advantage? Would we really want China to control the
| worlds semiconductor supply?
| iepathos wrote:
| The western world would not be compelled to engage
| militarily over Taiwan. We'd only need to provide money and
| weapons to Taiwan (rank #21 military in the world) to hold
| off China (#3) indefinitely given the fact that Taiwan is
| incredibly difficult to invade due to the barrier the
| mountain ridges form around it and the narrow straight
| leading to it for a sea attack. It's a natural fortress.
| Look at the ongoing failure of Russia (#2) in Ukraine (#22)
| despite not having difficult land to traverse in their
| invasion and having a greater advantage in military power
| by comparison.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| How do you provide weapons to Taiwan if Chinese Navy
| blockades Taiwan?
| tuatoru wrote:
| Ahead of time.
| namaria wrote:
| Whoever ends up controlling Taiwan will have a lot of
| destroyed factories on their hands. Losing 90% of
| advanced integrated processor output is world changing by
| itself. Besides the fact that military analysis done by
| us news spectators is a vain exercise.
| rcarr wrote:
| The company that makes the machines that TSMC use to make
| chips is Dutch if I remember correctly. So if Taiwan gets
| invaded it is a disaster but not an absolute disaster as
| presumably USA/other countries could order some machines
| from said company and start afresh. Supply would be
| constrained for a long period of time and there would be a
| massive economic hit but it wouldn't necessarily have to
| lead to WW3. If Russia is anything to go by, presumably
| there will be indicators in the months before as to when an
| attack is going to happen which means TSMC staff could be
| evacuated to other countries to get things up and running.
| I think I also read somewhere that USA was already in the
| process of setting up more chip fabrication on US soil in
| conjunction with TSMC, I think maybe in Texas if I remember
| right?
|
| I think I also read that the entire foundry would be rigged
| to blow in the case of invasion. Between controlled
| demolitions such as these by Taiwan and whatever China has
| to fire at them to successfully win, there would be very
| little of value left standing on the island by the end of
| it. It would take them decades to redevelop it. Very hollow
| victory for China.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| A fab in Ohio, Oregon, or Arizona 10,000 km from China is
| safe from threats like cruise missiles that the proposed
| fab 1000 km from China in Japan or South Korea would not
| be.
|
| It's not so much that cruise missiles used on civilian
| targets in South Korea or Japan would not be a reason to
| start WW3, more that it would be less tempting.
| permo-w wrote:
| China recently tested a hypersonic missile that
| circumnavigated the global and then marginally missed its
| target
| vkou wrote:
| If China and the United States are in a full-on shooting
| war, the last thing I'm going to be worried about is what
| country 5nm chip fabs are based in. It's a complete and
| utter failure state of civilization, and is one hot-
| headed decision away from going nuclear.
|
| If chip fabs are at the top list of your worries, your
| perspective of war is probably overly informed by being
| on the side that undertakes imperial adventures against
| people who can't shoot back. Direct war against an actual
| superpower is horrific.
| sitkack wrote:
| All this talk of China invading Taiwan and attacking
| other countries in SE Asia is bonkers. Their economy
| would be cut off from the rest of the world in an
| instant. Their commercial fishing fleets would probably
| be driven back to port.
|
| It would take a matter of days until they had massive
| internal protests. Hungry people topple governments in
| hours.
| toss1 wrote:
| Yes it is bonkers, indeed!
|
| Yet, it is EXACTLY what Xi repeatedly said in his new-
| term-inauguration speech
|
| The dictator of China has effectively declared, as
| publicly as possible, and very specifically, that he
| intends to invade Taiwan if it does not willingly abandon
| it's democracy and come under China's rule
|
| He obviously thinks he can get away with doing so without
| consequences, including those you suggest.
|
| Yet, leaders make such mistakes all the time. Putin just
| made one on 24-Feb-2022.
|
| It is up to the western world to ensure that Xi sees that
| such an action would result in bad consequences for him,
| and deter him from his stated course.
|
| But the fact that it is bonkers is no assurance
| whatsoever that it won't happen.
| cowtools wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%27s_final_warning
| dirtyid wrote:
| Except, PRC "Final Warnings" has preluded actual war or
| near actual war with every NPT nuclear state, a few times
| when PRC wasn't (or not meaningfully) a nuclear power
| herself, on issues much less important than TW, when PRC
| was much more militarily weak than it is now. This
| includes USSR skirmishes (hence why the Soviet meme is
| stupid), US+UN in Korea, threatening UK over HK handover,
| secretly shelling French in Vietnam, multiple TW strait
| crisis. To add insult to injury, with respect to source
| of this meme, PRC "final warnings" throughout this period
| shot down 5 U2s, that's 3 more than USSR. So not only was
| PRC following up with warnings, but they managed to do so
| more successfully than USSR.
| toss1 wrote:
| That's great -- China issued over 900 "Final Warnings"
| about US military presence in the Taiwan Straits, and
| zero of them had any follow-through.
|
| That gives us good reason to hope that China will keep
| behaving that way. We can keep up the deterrence, China
| can keep on blustering, and nothing bad actually happens.
| That would indeed be a great result.
|
| Indeed, seems like a most likely scenario.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| > Their economy would be cut off from the rest of the
| world in an instant.
|
| I think you misunderstand deeply the current equilibrium
| in the world.
|
| Most of Africa, a significant part of South East Asia,
| some countries in Eastern Europe would definitely align
| with China. A significant part of South America would be
| neutral.
|
| The USA is losing allies nearly as fast as China is
| making them.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| rat87 wrote:
| Long range Cruise missles can hit Ohio Oregon or Arizona
| just as easily
| theptip wrote:
| I'm confused by this take. Who is threatening Japan with
| cruise missiles? Certainly not China or Russia. North
| Korea, perhaps.
|
| The primary reason that we're concerned about
| semiconductor fab concentration in Taiwan is that China
| has consistently stated that it is going to invade Taiwan
| at some point (and that could be 2049 or in a few years
| for all we know). This is completely outside of any
| hypothetical scenarios of who lobs cruise missiles at who
| during WW3.
|
| You can make the point that relying on semiconductor
| manufacturing outside of your country/coalition is a bad
| idea for military self-sufficiency, and I would agree,
| but that's a much more diffuse risk than the very
| specific scenario that is driving the CHIPS act and
| concern about fab concentration in Taiwan.
| blaser-waffle wrote:
| _> Who is threatening Japan with cruise missiles?
| Certainly not China or Russia. North Korea, perhaps._
|
| China has said that they believe that, in the event of
| hostilities over Taiwan, they will be obligated to strike
| US forces everywhere in the region -- and the US Navy
| still has a strong presence in Japan. Also S. Korea and
| the Philippines.
|
| This means potentially launching missiles at these
| countries too, and the Chinese have made it very clear to
| all involved that they will consider and/all US allies in
| the region as potential belligerents and act accordingly.
| AKA military action against Japan and SK, and possibly
| Australia and NZ. It is just another part of the Taiwan
| political calculus.
|
| Point is: moving the fabs out of Taiwan doesn't mean shit
| if they're still in a country that China could strike,
| and in the case of Japan, _would likely strike_ , in the
| event of hostilities.
| theptip wrote:
| > China has said that they believe that, in the event of
| hostilities over Taiwan, they will be obligated to strike
| US forces everywhere in the region
|
| Do you have a source for this? I haven't heard this
| stated before, but I'm not an expert here.
|
| Even taking this as true, I think it's a big leap to go
| from striking US military bases in Japan, to striking
| civilian infrastructure in those countries.
|
| It seems quite clear to me that the opening salvo you are
| hypothesizing (attacking multiple military bases and
| civilian targets) would be an act of war against the USA
| and Japan. This would certainly provoke all-out war with
| the US, and they have a first-use policy that could
| entail a nuclear response.
|
| Frankly the whole scenario above seems extremely unlikely
| to me, and I think Ukraine is the better example to model
| here. Essentially, China occupies Taiwan, and dares the
| US to strike in retaliation, knowing that their
| retaliation would be the thing that triggers armageddon,
| and betting that the US is not actually willing to
| escalate militarily over Taiwan. I predict that China
| would take an effort to avoid attacking any US military
| personnel stationed in Taiwan (I gather this is just an
| unofficial presence), because the rational play is to
| give the US as little excuse as possible to escalate in
| response.
|
| In other words, China MUST offer the US a path to de-
| escalation/capitulation in order to take Taiwan without a
| war with the USA. It's much easier to take Taiwan without
| a full war with the USA (obviously, IMO).
| Apocryphon wrote:
| The specifics of the top three economies in the world
| going to non-proxy war with one another, in the age of
| MAD, is incredibly hard to imagine.
| adriancr wrote:
| > China occupies Taiwan
|
| They're not even remotely capable of doing that before US
| intervenes. Taiwan is a heavily fortified island with
| unfriendly geography and a massive high tech army.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| That's a big if there. There's no guarantee that the US
| intervenes, especially depending on who the president
| happens to be at the time.
| canadianfella wrote:
| CydeWeys wrote:
| > China has said that they believe that, in the event of
| hostilities over Taiwan, they will be obligated to strike
| US forces everywhere in the region -- and the US Navy
| still has a strong presence in Japan. Also S. Korea and
| the Philippines.
|
| This would be starting World War III. It would be akin to
| the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, with the main
| difference being, we have thousands of nukes and China
| does not. This course of action is so profoundly stupid
| that I cannot imagine China taking it.
| jandrese wrote:
| That sounds like saber rattling to me. Trying to scare
| diplomats with talk of armageddon to secure a better
| bargaining position. It's a constant of international
| politics and one shouldn't read too much into it. The
| same is true of North Korea talking about turning Seoul
| into a crater whenever they need to ask for food aid.
| jldugger wrote:
| It is, for now. But it would be a lot safer if the chip
| fabs werent all located along a hotly contested south
| china sea.
| slickrick216 wrote:
| If China attempts an invasion on Taiwan it is not
| unrealistic to suggest they'll also take a swing at Japan
| and at least try to destroy the fabs there.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| China does not want Japan. They want Taiwan and
| preferably with chip factories intact.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| It's possible for China to attack fabs in Japan but China
| attacking Japan is a WW3 level escalation without a
| doubt. Invading Taiwan may or may not be.
|
| Japan is very able to defend itself against China and the
| Chinese know that. That doesn't mean the Japanese would
| win a war with China, but who knows? Who would think
| Ukraine could take on Russia? If China seriously went to
| war with the US and Japan China could be blockaded.
|
| The history of the last fifty years suggest the Chinese
| are pretty measured in their use of force. I'm sure they
| would try to capture Taiwan if they were confident they
| could with acceptable losses. But they realize time is on
| their side and they are not crazy gamblers like Putin.
| dirtyid wrote:
| Depends on how Sino-US competition veers.
|
| As important as TW is to rejuvenation narrative, it's
| ultimately the consolation prize versus dismantling US
| east asian security architecture and securing regional+
| hegemony. That's the grand finale battle for the
| lightcone of future PRC security/prosperity.
|
| >Japan is very able to defend
|
| Japan (and SKR, and TW, and even PH) like most US allies
| in island chain are are heavily dependant on energy and
| calorie imports. They can defend themselves against
| invasion, but they can't defend against PRC turning them
| into Yemen by wrecking critical infra (cut internet
| cables, destroy power nodes, mine ports etc). Stuff that
| make them non viable as a modern economy/society. The
| flip side of trying to contain PRC during peace is if
| they try to contain PRC during war, they're stuck in the
| island chain with a much more autarkic PRC who can spoil
| region indefinitely. And because US has security
| commitments, it maybe in PRC interest to draw US to
| defend allies where PRC forces balance is strongest.
|
| I also think while CCP obviously prefers low cost
| reuninfication (even if armed), I personally would not be
| surprised if things escalate much broader because there
| are larger (and worthwhile) goals / targets. If Australia
| is going to contribute to even supporting US efforts in
| TW scenario, then destroying US military infra in AU
| (Pinegap, Geraldton, Exmouth) will cripple US Indo Pac
| operation. If anything, there may come a point of
| favourable future PRC power balance mixed with levels of
| percieved US antagonism where PRC will be eager for
| excuses to eliminate US regional/global military infra.
| greycol wrote:
| The issue is in such a war China is also cut off. A major
| point of their south china sea claims is to ensure that
| there is no peaceful way to block oil (and other
| products) being delivered to Chinese ports. In an attack
| on Japan (that doesn't turn into MAD) China also loses
| this supply chain and becomes reliant on Russia for
| energy imports and the infratructure for that reliance
| isn't in place yet and is also a major weakness.
| dirtyid wrote:
| PRC is essentially calorically food secure (with huge
| waste / room to optimize), has large energy reserves, and
| unlike island nations, massive domestic raw resource
| supplies. PRC is NOT Japan during WW2. Hence PRC is much
| more autarkic and can drag on war economy, perhaps
| indefinitely. Sure people will eat less meat and depend
| more on EVs (maybe even cope on bikes) during transition,
| but when shit hits fan, PRC + RU (is a powerful self
| sufficient land bloc with much greater long term war
| making potential than US partners trapped on vunerable
| islands. It's about asymmetric vunerability.
|
| >The issue is in such a war China is also cut off
|
| The Malacca dilemma was based on assumption that US had
| unilateral power to blockade PRC imports with impunity
| due to being domestically energy secure - it was an
| argument/strategy also based on asymmetric vunerability.
|
| But that's increasingly not true, the TLDR is PRC rocket
| force likely already has capability or will in short term
| to _conventionally_ strike major US energy infra... US is
| existentially dependant on ~150 refineries - they are as
| dependant on these refineries as PRC is on maritime
| energy shipping. People conflate resource security as
| having more resources in your soil but it's really about
| the ability to protect the critical extraction/delivery
| infra. Otherwise Saudi wouldn't bribe US for security.
| Obviously conventional CONUS strikes is also a prelude to
| MAD, but it is also an equation for PRC establishing
| mutual vunerability with US, which greatly constrains US
| actions. Not to mention such capability also functionally
| dismantles US naval supremacy via port strikes (both
| capital and support assets) that underpins US global
| power projection.
|
| My feeling is that the chance of US blockading PRC when
| she becomes as (conventionally) vunerable as PRC is
| increasingly remote. It's hard to understate how much
| geostrategic calculations must change once a relatively
| autarkic industrial power as massive as PRC is able
| credibly bring actual war to US homefront. It will be
| first time in modern history where conventional fires can
| penetrate CONUS to meaningfully degrade US society. US
| will have to assess whether it wants to fight a possibly
| existential war (possibly at best a pyrrhic one where she
| might not uphold her hegemony after) or abandon East Asia
| where PRC preponderance is increasingly difficult to
| match or deter, especially with respect to TW.
| bendhoefs wrote:
| Why? If China decides to invade Taiwan surely they'll do
| everything they can to not give the rest of the world a
| reason to intervene.
|
| They want Taiwan not a war with the entire west all at
| once.
| etempleton wrote:
| The United States has indicated that they would
| intervene, which means the only way to have a chance at a
| successful amphibious landing would be to conduct
| preemptive strikes against US bases in the region. To do
| so would be a direct declaration of war against the US
| and NATO, which, at current, China cannot hope to win.
|
| I think China is out of there mind here. They either are
| A. willing to smash Taiwan to rubble and call it a
| victory or B. completely overestimate their chance of
| success.
|
| I think China's real hope is that they can threaten their
| way to an advantageous position and take Taiwan without
| firing a bullet, but so far no one is blinking and the
| west is fed up with autocrats threatening warfare to get
| their way.
| ericmay wrote:
| NATO specifically doesn't involve European partners in a
| war in the Pacific. Not to say some may or may not join
| the US in the fight.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > If China decides to invade Taiwan surely they'll do
| everything they can to not give the rest of the world a
| reason to intervene.
|
| That only works if the rest of the world hasn't already
| decided to intervene.
|
| And sure - NATO isn't "the rest of the world"; but
| militarily, it might as well be.
| ericmay wrote:
| "Taking" Taiwan with abrupt military force cannot be
| decoupled from a war with the entire west all at once. At
| least US, UK, SK, AUS, and others (unsure about EU
| involvement).
| addingadimensio wrote:
| If China invades Taiwan it's not unrealistic to think
| they'll also start World War III at the same time? I
| think that's unrealistic
| theptip wrote:
| That seems very unrealistic to suggest, to me.
| xwolfi wrote:
| It is very unlikely, if not impossible: China has
| repeatedly stated Taiwan is in China, Taiwan has
| repeatedly stated they, in fact, are the legitimate
| China, both prepare day and night for an invasion they
| never dismiss, and both are a direct threat to each other
| politically, geographically and culturally.
|
| Japan ? They're as threatened by China as India, and
| nobody in China is planning for administrative take over
| of 130 millions Japanese anytime soon. And Japan has so
| many problems to solve already, they're not looking at
| bothering China enough to risk missiles.
| bluepizza wrote:
| It is completely unrealistic. Japan is protected by the
| USA. Any attacks on Japanese territory would lead to
| nuclear annihilation of Beijing.
| pweezy wrote:
| China is a nuclear power and neither the US nor China is
| interested in MAD. Any attacks on Japanese territory
| would probably lead to a hot war with the US, but almost
| certainly not nuclear annihilation.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| This sounds like what was being said about Taiwan a few
| years ago.
| bluepizza wrote:
| It absolutely does not. Taiwan was never under any sort
| of agreement, and the USA has always been ambiguous about
| its policy towards Taiwan.
|
| This is completely different from the mutual defense
| agreement that Japan has with the USA, where it has been
| made very clear that the USA will protect Japan.
|
| I understand you want to have a critical opinion, but you
| need to look at the facts.
| hollerith wrote:
| In particular, Japan has the economic and technological
| might to have been able to make nukes decades ago. They
| didn't because they received a promise from the US that
| if anyone nuked them, the US would retaliate with its
| nukes. In exchange, Japan promised it would not make
| nukes (and probably also promised to consult with the US
| on Japanese national security matters). This deal came
| about because both Japan and the US see the value in
| keeping the number of countries with nukes low.
| mlsu wrote:
| If China invaded Taiwan it would be despite, not because
| of, the fabs there.
| 22SAS wrote:
| If they agree to stay the fuck out of Japan and focus
| solely on Taiwan, NATO will stay put to avoid WW3. Plus,
| South Korea, Japan, have treaties with the US, which will
| lead the US to intervene if either of these countries
| gets attacked. China might not want to officially give
| NATO a reason to start WW3.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Who is threatening Japan with cruise missiles?
| Certainly not China or Russia. North Korea, perhaps._
|
| China. Japan cooperates with AUKUS [1]. If Xi invades
| Taiwan, it's going to pull in America, Britain, Australia
| and-in all likelihood-Japan.
|
| That said, we're more likely to see a recapitulation of
| the Ukraine playbook than direct intervention by American
| and Japanese forces.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AUKUS
| monocasa wrote:
| Japan has inquired about participating in AUKUS, but
| doesn't currently.
| godelski wrote:
| > I'm confused by this take. Who is threatening Japan
| with cruise missiles? Certainly not China or Russia.
| North Korea, perhaps.
|
| Countries that have actively threatened Japan with
| nuclear bombs: China, Russia, North Korea, and the US
| (which literally dropped a bomb but have yet to make
| threats since).
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Okay? Put some dates on those, because you know damn well
| WWII is irrelevant to the question of current threats.
| rat87 wrote:
| No just no
|
| Our dedication to protect our ally Taiwan has nothing to do
| with Silicone and neither does China's nationalist
| obsession over it. If it comes to war, chips will play no
| role
| l33t233372 wrote:
| What does our dedication have to do with if not that?
|
| Why are you so quick to dismiss being protective of such
| an important resource as a motivation to protect Taiwan?
| giobox wrote:
| While we can likely all agree "Silicone" is not the
| issue, silicon chips is undoubtedly an important
| variable. The Taiwanese government agrees too, and does
| think chips will play a role:
|
| "Taiwan's president, Tsai Ing-wen, told one group that
| she saw the island's tech prowess as a means of shoring
| up support for its democracy. Calling economic security a
| "pillar" of national security, she said Taiwan was
| willing to work with partners to build sustainable supply
| chains for what she called "democracy chips."
|
| > https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/29/technology/taiwan-
| chips.h...
|
| This is hardly an "out-there" take, too.
| jotm wrote:
| I mean, yeah, they're great, but come on. Most of the
| important stuff runs on stuff that's decades old.
| Apofis wrote:
| My laptop and iPhone are fast enough... I can't believe
| some people would risk a nuclear war over not having the
| latest iPhone next year.
| toss1 wrote:
| The latest electronic gadget is NOT what it is about
|
| It is whether the democracies of the world will abandon
| democracy and allow dictators to take over their
| societies by threat of force or force.
|
| If we are not both better armed, better prepared, and
| willing to fight, we might as well hand over the key to
| Putin, Xi, and Un, and live under their dictatorships.
|
| If we want freedom, we must risk war, and if the threat
| is nuclear war, then that most of all must be faced down.
| There is a reason we don't negotiate with terrorists or
| blackmailers -- because if we negotiate and let them gain
| from terrorism or blackmail, we get a short period of
| peace before they try it again, along with every other
| wannabe dictator who can get their hands on some weapons.
| This all applies even more strongly with nukes.
|
| It sucks, but there is no other choice.
| coryfklein wrote:
| Despite being close to China as the crow flies, the
| _geopolitical_ difference between Japan and Taiwan means they
| could be on opposite sides of the globe.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| Can you break that down? I am not sure I understand what
| you mean.
| TillE wrote:
| They're different countries with entirely different
| relationships to the PRC.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| "On entire other sides of the globe" is a pretty strong
| statement. Japan is a vassal state of the US and Taiwan's
| independence from China relies wholly on US support.
| Chinese citizens (at least the ones I questioned) have no
| love for Japanese. There are even talks of a Pacific NATO
| between Vietnam, Korea, Japan, and the Phillipines, with
| Taiwan being the clear Ukraine parallel. South Korea is
| probably politically like Germany (primarily self
| interested), Japan is probably politically like the UK
| (sees the bigger picture).
| rat87 wrote:
| Japan is not a vassal state. It's a powerful country
| that's an ally of the US.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| Japan's constitution prohibits a traditional military as
| a result of surrender in WW2. Not having the right to
| solve your own disputes sounds like vassalization to me.
| From a face saving perspective "powerful ally country" is
| probably the status of every vassal state. From a de
| facto perspective they are not allowed to solve their own
| disputes and house military bases of a country that
| solves disputes (with the threat of violence) on their
| behalf.
|
| The difference between ally and vassal seems like one of
| alignment. Right now Japan and the US are quite aligned,
| but were alignment different, I think the status would be
| as well.
| l33t233372 wrote:
| Japan is by no means a Vassal states. It has the third
| largest GDP in the world, and is a major player in its
| own right, although you are correct in asserting that it
| is militarily comparable with far less wealthy nations.
| hollerith wrote:
| Building a fab in Japan instead Taiwan does quite a lot to
| mitigate geopolitical issues.
| xwdv wrote:
| China is not dumb enough to assault Japan, and if they blow
| up Japanese fabs they know that will be the end of China as
| we once knew it. Don't give the US a reason to retaliate
| hard.
|
| They might rattle their sabers but these fabs will be safe.
| adeptima wrote:
| "The plant will produce 22-nanometer and 28-nanometer chips to
| address strong global demand for speciality chip technologies,
| they said"
|
| I'm curious why not the latest - 3nm, 5nm
| dr-detroit wrote:
| svnt wrote:
| They may be preparing to do both, and in both the US and
| Japan. Their statement is then technically true and does not
| upset the mainland.
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| bluGill wrote:
| Good enough. There is nothing wrong with existing parts and
| so why spend money to design new ones. Inflation is bad
| enough without having to pay for new engineering as well
| deqwer wrote:
| [deleted]
| detaro wrote:
| There is no spare capacity to build highest-end process fabs,
| and there is huge demand for capacity in 22/28nm too.
| sylware wrote:
| "spare capacity" ? what do you mean ? Taiwan and South
| Korea are enough to supply the world demand? Well, it is
| still hard to get your hands on top-notch chips at a
| reasonable price whatever the news is saying...
| paulmd wrote:
| > Well, it is still hard to get your hands on top-notch
| chips at a reasonable price whatever the news is
| saying...
|
| it's really not and actually the slowdown is so bad that
| AMD has had to reduce production, as well as other
| companies reducing memory/flash wafer starts etc.
|
| it's not just intel or fake news, availability really
| hasn't been a problem for a year or more at this point,
| and if anything we're starting to shift into the "glut"
| phase of the bullwhip cycle.
| reportingsjr wrote:
| It depends on what you're looking at. I develop
| electronics hardware, and it is still incredibly
| difficult to get a lot of ICs.
|
| Texas instruments still has not caught up, and their
| chips are used just about everything, including on
| graphics cards.
| paulmd wrote:
| yeah that's fair, the embedded market (both power,
| microcontrollers, and others) is still fucked up, but,
| the leading-edge market is in oversupply at this point
| and companies are starting to pull back production hard.
| kuschku wrote:
| You need certain machines for EUV. There's only one
| manufacturer (ASML) for those, and they're at capacity.
| And even if they wanted to scale up, there's only one
| manufacturer (Zeiss) for the EUV mirrors required for
| those machines, and all their capacity for the next years
| is already bought as well.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| DUV seems to be economical down to about 7nm though.
| kuschku wrote:
| From what Intel put out in marketing materials, even at
| 14nm they had a very unreliable process with DUV. So, it
| might not be economical for the type of IC produced in
| these factories.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| TSMC (and Intel) use DUV for their 7nm.
|
| TSMC's DUV 7 processes are reportedly very good.
|
| And I thought Intel's 14 was good too (after some
| ramping), which is why they stayed on it and iterated on
| it for so long, it was the 10nm process they had so much
| trouble with and the problems there are not generally
| reported to be with lithography but materials (cobalt,
| among other things, which they dropped in later nodes).
|
| So I'm not sure what you are trying to argue. DUV has
| _proven_ to be economical down to about 7nm.
| sylware wrote:
| So it means that chinese SMIC announced '7nm' implies
| they have EUV working?
| me_me_me wrote:
| I am announcing 1nm chip rihht here right now! Trust me I
| wouldn't lie.
|
| The nm measure is a marketing tool. Intel nm is 'larger'
| because they were measuring gates differently.
|
| I only take nm claims as comparison of products of same
| company.
| Sakos wrote:
| No, they don't have EUV. They have 7nm which they're
| doing with DUV, but they're hitting the same issues Intel
| did with abysmal yields and there's no guarantee that
| SMIC will be able to solve something Intel was never able
| to.
| sylware wrote:
| ... unless they jump onto the EUV train. That said heard
| that japan may come back as a top-notch silicium country
| with... nanoimprint?!
| terminalcommand wrote:
| Why can't ASML scale up? I don't understand this. I think
| because they are a monopoly they can work slower, they
| don't need the extra profits.
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| It's not software - they can't just sprinkle some
| Kubernetes on it and scale. There are complex global
| supply chains involving extreme cutting-edge technology,
| engineering, and research.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Why didn't they simply build more chips in 2020 instead
| of shuttering all of those automobile factories?
|
| At some point you're running into actual, real
| constraints, real bottlenecks in the supply chain, that
| will take years to resolve. You can't just scale up on
| short timeframes, no more than you can make a baby in a
| shorter time frame.
| xxpor wrote:
| ASML is (now) a company everyone has heard of, but like
| GP hinted at with their Zeiss comment, their supply chain
| is crazy deep as well. Getting everything scaled up
| across companies and countries is far from trivial.
| terminalcommand wrote:
| That's true, but this is one of the most important techs
| we have. From the recent news, I see that TSMC wants ASML
| to scale up as well. TSMC announced that it will cut its
| capital expenditure by 10% due to supply problems. This
| announcement tanked ASML's share price.
|
| My comment is that ASML is hitting their profit targets,
| they have backlog until 2024. If I were leading ASML or
| an employee of it, I wouldn't want to scale up. I am
| already hitting my targets, it's cozy, I have backlog
| until 2024, I have no competition.
|
| The current situation is good for ASML and bad for us.
|
| My comment is equally applicable for all companies in the
| supply chain that are monopolies.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| Apparently ASML's internal processes are a mess, with
| everything consistently blocked by technical debt. I
| suspect this is the biggest blocker to their ability to
| scale their production faster.
| achenet wrote:
| this makes me wish I were like the Harvey Keitel
| character in Pulp Fiction, so I could straighten my tie,
| say "I'm on it", and hop into my vintage Mercedes
| convertible to go fix it.
| tempnow987 wrote:
| They have a build process video. A lot of knowledge is in
| folks heads as well from what they said - and nothing is
| "mass produced" really. And it's all at the absolute
| limits.
|
| Zeiss covers their mirrors and lenses. The smoothness is
| extreme: "If you were to enlarge such a mirror to the
| size of Germany, the largest unevenness - the Zugspitze,
| so to speak - would be a whole 0.1 millimeters high."
|
| Then they have positioning / tilt accuracy.
|
| "If one of these EUV mirrors were to redirect a laser
| beam and aim it at the Moon, it would be able to hit a
| ping pong ball on the Moon's surface."
|
| What they don't say is what the yield is on these. I've
| heard they have to try and make X to get y that can hit
| all the specs.
|
| In the machines themselves didn't they have to build in
| both an electron microscope and an atomic force
| microscope for defect detection?
|
| And then the environment they operate in is terrible from
| a wavelength absorption energy / contamination (tin?)
| issues etc.
| Negitivefrags wrote:
| Scaling up too much is a huge risk. Sure, people want a
| lot more EUV machines right _now_ , but what if they
| don't later? You can be left with a lot of expensive
| capital outlay that is going unused.
|
| The semi industry is known for being very boom/bust so
| it's best not to scale up too quick lest it kill your
| company.
| terminalcommand wrote:
| This is a convincing argument.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| To produce 3nm and 5nm, you need to order fabs from ASML who
| has an enormous backlog..
|
| On the other hand, 22nm and 28nm are almost 10 year old
| technologies and they are still used in cars, so much so that
| the industry is begging car manufacturers to get to newer
| nodes [1].
|
| [1] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/19/chip_manufacturer_
| chi...
| xadhominemx wrote:
| Japanese customers like Sony and Renesas have growing demand
| on 22/28nm
| blihp wrote:
| Cost... both to design for the node and to manufacture on it.
| A lot of products don't need the latest and greatest process
| node, they just need economical capacity.
| reportingsjr wrote:
| I saw some pictures a while ago on twitter of their new fab in
| Arizona under construction. It looked pretty similar. TSMC
| means business when they start building out. I don't want to
| imagine handling logistics on a construction site like this!
| downrightmike wrote:
| Time is money. And they are making bank.
| deqwer wrote:
| habibur wrote:
| and then what? it will take several years to be operational.
| and people are afraid things might escalate within months.
| incomingpain wrote:
| The massive war with China has left obvious key issues in chip
| fabrication. The reason or whatever for the ongoing war with
| china doesn't matter.
|
| Similar factories are being built in Germany by Infineon:
| https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/about-infineon/press/press-r...
|
| Samsung in Texas:
| https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/samsung-plans-17-...
|
| Intel in Arizona: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/23/intel-is-
| spending-20-billion...
|
| Samsung/SK in Korea: https://fortune.com/2021/05/13/south-
| korea-chip-semiconducto...
|
| India is doing something with Risc-V:
| https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=1820621
|
| Overall, divestment from china seems to be the goal. But this
| many new factories being produced is going to overproduce chips
| and eliminate any profitability; but inexpensive chips like
| this will most likely create a boon to the economies.
| undersuit wrote:
| If the US was really serious about microchips being critical
| infrastructure we'd want over production. We have more roads
| than makes sense, we should have more chips on-hand than our
| critical power and data infrastructure needs to be rebuilt in
| the event of a catastrophe.
| tobyjsullivan wrote:
| Strategies like this are how you end up with warehouses
| full of rusting parts. Government-funded overproduction
| leads to stockpiling at the taxpayer's expense.
|
| It's been done many times before (weapons, food, etc.) and
| always leads to the exact same result: garbage heaps and no
| available resources when they're actually needed.
|
| Offering companies grants and favors to encourage building
| real, sustainable, on-shore businesses has a much higher
| likelihood of success.
| achenet wrote:
| https://archive.ph/ICWl6
| sabujp wrote:
| semi stocks are at all time lows and PE levels. Don't let this
| doom and gloom piece prevent you from buying more
| bagacrap wrote:
| If you didn't sell semi stocks at their peak last November,
| when will you sell them?
|
| And if you didn't buy till they were near their peak, did you
| really care about PE ratios?
| alexk307 wrote:
| Agreed - so much long term upside paired with tons of short
| term uncertainity.
| ac29 wrote:
| Note that the typically given P/E ratio is a backwards looking
| number, not forwards.
|
| Intel trades at 5.5x PE for the last 12 months but 12.1x PE for
| the next 12 months (estimated, obviously). Intel specifically
| is also not at an "all time low" - they IPO'd in 1971 and have
| grown significantly since then.
|
| I agree there are some bargains to be had in semi stocks, but
| keep in mind things may very well get worse before they get
| better.
| Isinlor wrote:
| China already declared that it will use force in Taiwan if
| "possibilities for a peaceful reunification should be completely
| exhausted".
|
| From Chinese Anti-Secession Law:
|
| Article 8: In the event that the "Taiwan independence"
| secessionist forces should act under any name or by any means to
| cause the fact of Taiwan's secession from China, or that major
| incidents entailing Taiwan's secession from China should occur,
| or that possibilities for a peaceful reunification should be
| completely exhausted, the state shall employ non-peaceful means
| and other necessary measures to protect China's sovereignty and
| territorial integrity.
|
| https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2004_2009/documents/...
|
| It is USA/EU strategic interest to avoid too deep dependency on
| Taiwan. We should support the status quo there as people of
| Taiwan are prosperous and peaceful nation. But we can't be caught
| off guard by China as EU was caught off guard by Russia.
| lovich wrote:
| The soviets used this ad a phrase given how many times China
| doesn't follow through with a threat.[1]
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%27s_final_warning
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| China will invade Taiwan when the cost to do so is low enough
| and/or they are desperate. In other words, the probability of
| success is considerably higher today than it will be in the
| future (even if the probability of success today isn't great).
|
| Russia is a declining state relative to Ukraine & Europe, so
| Putin's odds of success in 2022 were considerably higher than
| they would be 10 years later. So _if_ invading Ukraine was
| necessary at some point, 2022 was the best time to do it.
|
| China's regime believes that invading Taiwan is necessary, but
| OTOH the Chinese military is getting stronger very quickly and
| they believe they'll be in a much better position to invade in
| a decade then they are now. So there is no way they're going to
| invade any time soon.
|
| Avoiding a war completely is highly unlikely given Xi & China's
| policies. But delaying a war is highly likely. And a war
| indefinitely delayed is a war avoided.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Check for fifth columns. They'll probably prefer to have
| those than to try w/o them.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| > And a war indefinitely delayed is a war avoided.
|
| You spend the rest of the comment before this talking about
| how war will happen when they are stronger and probably can't
| be avoided, so I don't know how this last sentence follows.
|
| If you know for sure that someone will wage war on you in
| future, and that they will get stronger faster than you will,
| then it could be in your interest to go to war against them
| sooner rather than later.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Xi's China will wage war. It won't always be Xi's China.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| So you've reversed your position about the inevitability
| of war with China then?
| breckenedge wrote:
| Treating political and military leaders as rational entities
| is dangerous.
| tanseydavid wrote:
| >> Treating political and military leaders as rational
| entities is dangerous.
|
| I would think the opposite to be true.
|
| How do you attempt to apply to game theory to a situation
| where the other party is completely irrational? It seems
| impossible to me.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Xi is one of the most rational actors on the world stage.
| Machiavellian rational, but rational. I recommend the
| Economist's podcast series on him.
| spamizbad wrote:
| Is he? I feel like everyone said this about Putin and now
| the narrative has changed and he's an unstable madman
| whose going to launch a nuke if he loses too badly in his
| war.
|
| Like many politicians, Xi is ruthlessly self-interested.
| His actions that allow him to consolidate power aren't
| necessarily in the best interests of China.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| >> Is he?
|
| Yeah, Biden himself recently said that Putin is a
| rational actor who grossly miscalculated, because he was
| basically fed very bad and flawed intel. He may be
| blustering about nukes now, but the only way he would do
| that is if Ukraine turns the tables and invades Russia,
| or something similar.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| bombcar wrote:
| "Rational" has somehow become synonymous with "good" or
| "agrees with me" - rationality doesn't have anything to
| do with those, it just means "not insane".
|
| And tyrants can be exceedingly rational; they just have
| their own goals that they're working towards, not the
| goals of some theoretical "perfect democracy".
| hunterb123 wrote:
| It's insane to farm people for organs and to run
| concentration camps.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Yes, I think this is a great example of parent
| commentators point.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| >> How would Biden know what a rational actor is? He can
| barely string a sentence together.
|
| This is a gross thing to say about someone who has a
| speech impediment.
| MockObject wrote:
| MockObject wrote:
| > Would a rational actor enslave an entire ethnic
| minority in work camps, allow harvesting of organs, crush
| their financial world hub (Hong Kong), and so on?
|
| There is nothing irrational about the first two! Crushing
| HK is a rational necessity if there is a danger of such
| disobedience spreading to other regions.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > now the narrative has changed and he's an unstable
| madman whose going to launch a nuke if he loses too badly
| in his war.
|
| Yes, this sort of narrative plays a lot better when
| describing someone you're actively at war with. Along
| with the fact that you are always winning the war.
| Ukraine has been winning the war with Russia for about 9
| months now, according to the media.
| Paradigma11 wrote:
| "Ukraine has been winning the war with Russia for about 9
| months now, according to the media."
|
| What media?
|
| In the beginning most reporting was that it would be over
| in a week. Then Russia had that little blunder with their
| first offensive. Then again most reporting was that the
| russian artillery steamroller would squash the
| Ukrainians. Now most media favor the Ukrainians due to
| their recent successes. Also goals and frames of
| reference changed. In the beginning winning for Ukraine
| was not letting Russia roflstomping them. Now it is
| throwing all russian military out of their country.
| chrischen wrote:
| Consolidating power isn't inherently against the
| interests of China. And as poster above explained, Putin
| is acting rationally. In fact, war is probably one of the
| most rational and pervasive actions throughout history.
| Probably every country has gone to war and it's not
| always because some madman went berserk.
|
| It's always in our interest to simply reduce our enemy to
| madmen or nazis, as it justifies our own counter
| aggression.
| Gunnerhead wrote:
| For anyone interested, the podcast is "The Prince" by The
| Economist.
| [deleted]
| consumer451 wrote:
| I would mostly agree, but is "saving face"[0] considered
| rational behavior? How big a factor is that in this
| thread's context?
|
| Honest questions here.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_(sociological_concept)
| #Ch...
| MockObject wrote:
| It's quite rational because of the crucial importance of
| reputation internationally, and the image of competence
| domestically.
| Slartie wrote:
| If by "internationally" you mean Western countries: Xi
| Jinping doing dumb things to save his "face" is very
| detrimental to his reputation there.
|
| No one outside of China thinks his stubborn refusal to
| abandon the failed Zero Covid policy is in any way a good
| idea. Everyone sees it as a stupid and irrational face-
| saving action.
| glitchc wrote:
| Xi is not rational. His isolationist policies and "return
| to Mao-style communism" have killed China's economy. The
| current zero-COVID policy is the icing on the cake: It
| runs completely counter to scientific thought and is
| impossible to achieve for 1.2 billion people. He's
| painted himself into a corner and is unwilling to budge
| (how can the Premier be wrong?), and is doing tremendous
| damage to China in the process.
| kragen wrote:
| > _Xi[ 's] ... isolationist policies ... have killed
| China's economy._
|
| The PRC's GDP was US$17.7 trillion nominal in 02021, the
| latest year for which we have numbers, according to
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_China. That
| makes it the world's second largest economy by nominal
| dollar value (after the US) and the largest by PPP.
| That's not just individual countries, either; it overtook
| the economy of the EU in nominal GDP in 02021 under Xi's
| leadership. The IMF's estimate for 02022 is US$20
| trillion according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_
| of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi....
|
| This isn't just a matter of domestic numbers that can be
| fudged, either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cou
| ntries_by_exports says it exported US$3 trillion worth of
| goods in 02021, up from US$2.5 billion in 02020, making
| it the world's #1 exporter, with almost twice the exports
| of the US at #2, though by this measure the entire EU
| does still exceed PRC. (The EU is excluded from the list
| for not being a country.)
|
| Nor is it just a question of adding together poverty-
| level earnings of 1.2 billion people. The PRC's per-
| capita GDP is US$20k PPP. Economically, the average
| Chinese person is doing fine, although they're
| experiencing a lot of unfortunate things outside the
| economic sphere.
|
| China's economy is experiencing major difficulties
| (Evergrande, zero-COVID lockdowns) but it is far from
| being "killed" or a "return to Mao-style communism", by
| which I charitably assume you mean 01970s-style
| stagnation and not, for example, the largest famine in
| human history.
|
| You should take a long hard look at where you're getting
| your information from and how you decide what information
| is trustworthy.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| The games played with currency and private debt that
| fueled the massive export boom are not sustainable
| indefinitely. There are already signs it may be tipping,
| and the world raising interest rates to combat inflation
| will worsen the situation. Combine that with their
| exports to the US falling due to sanctions and a new
| interest in US manufacturing. And as their population and
| the population of their other trading partners all
| shrink...
|
| They are still growing, they are still getting stronger,
| but for how long? Meanwhile 70% of Taiwanese residents
| now identify as Taiwanese rather than Chinese?
|
| If they wait for that percentage to climb, and for TSMC
| to diversify fabs to other places? The cost to take
| Taiwan is going up, and the prize for taking it is
| falling with no reason to expect inflections in either.
| If they don't take it now, there is really no point
| taking it at all.
|
| Rationally speaking, there probably already isn't any
| point in taking it. It would tank exports and speed the
| adoption of local manufacturing elsewhere. All to get a
| temporary stranglehold on chip supply? What would they do
| with those chips? They are already far too export
| dominated. They need consumers to reduce their exports.
| If they want to win the long game, let their 1% give half
| their wealth to educating knowledge workers to buy their
| manufacturing rather than exporting it.
| hunglee2 wrote:
| I think people overrate TSMC are the primary motivator
| for the PRC, who have basically maintained the same
| posture toward the 'renegade province' since 1949. This
| is unfinished business from a civil war which never
| officially ended.
| kragen wrote:
| I agree, but I think TSMC has also assumed a geopolitical
| importance it didn't have previously.
| hunglee2 wrote:
| for sure, but most opinion from the west inflates TSMC as
| primary motivator, its a complicating factor yes, but the
| PRC has been on about taking Taiwan for the past 70
| years, before semi-conductors were even invented.
|
| look at the top voted comment in this thread - the
| narrative is some sort of escalation from Xi Jinping when
| unification with Taiwan is boilerplate rhetoric which
| every leader since Deng says at Party Congress.
|
| PRC position has not changed - commitment to unification
| by peaceful means, but war never off the table.
| kragen wrote:
| Agreed! I think there was maybe some real escalation
| around the time of Pelosi's visit (where Morris Chang was
| in attendance in her photo-op with Tsai), though, and
| it's hard not to see the moves in HK as threatening.
| hunglee2 wrote:
| Chang is the leader Taiwan really needs, unfortunately he
| is unable to moderate Tsai. TSMC will eventually be a
| loser in the story that is currently being written
| kragen wrote:
| Yeah, I can't imagine he was happy with TSMC having to
| cancel all its sales to Huawei. But that wasn't really
| Tsai's fault; _nobody_ is able to moderate the US, and
| the sanctions weren 't a Taiwanese policy. I was thinking
| reunification was really the only path to saving TSMC,
| but if Chang agreed, he probably would've declined the
| invitation to the photo op; and obviously he knows more
| than I do about the issues.
|
| Instead he says reunification would destroy TSMC because
| of how dependent it is on overseas suppliers.
| hunglee2 wrote:
| hmmm....not sure I agree here.
|
| Tsai is not entirely a creature of the US, and has
| indirectly - perhaps initially, inadvertently -
| manipulated the US by pushing for an unendorsed
| independence, forcing the US to deal with a situation
| they hadn't before considered - a 'two china' outcome.
|
| However, now that US does sees this outcome, it cannot
| unsee it and is thus driving hard to secure that outcome,
| no doubt as a stepping stone for the long term goal of
| regime change in PRC
|
| As for Chang, I think status quo is his ideal outcome -
| de facto independence, TSMC servicing two of the biggest
| economies in the world, and therefore, the entire world.
| Not happening now though, sadly
| kragen wrote:
| Hmm, interesting. I'll have to think about that.
| kragen wrote:
| I agree with many of these points. The future is
| unpredictable, whoever is on top today will not be on top
| forever, and the idea of being governed by the PRC is
| very unpopular in Taiwan. And nothing you have said
| supports our more ignorant interlocutor's point that Xi's
| policies have "killed China's economy".
|
| Still, other points I disagree with.
|
| PRC's exports to the US are not falling; they fell in
| 02019 due to sanctions and in 02020 due to covid, but
| they're already back above their 02018 level, which was
| the highest in history. See
| https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html.
| They probably will not fall within the next decade or
| two.
|
| If US manufacturing becomes stronger, that will increase
| PRC exports to the US, not decrease them. (If the US
| doesn't have anything to trade for Chinese products, it
| will not get them, which may cause them to be sold to
| different customers or may cause their production to be
| reduced.)
|
| I think increased interest rates abroad would tend to
| increase PRC's exports, not decrease them. As far as I
| know, PRC isn't _borrowing_ money _from_ abroad to
| finance expansion of production capacity; it 's _lending_
| money abroad to finance consumption of its exports.
|
| PRC's population is not shrinking, though it's barely
| growing and may start shrinking soon. Most of their
| trading partners have growing populations.
|
| TSMC cannot be taken, even today; it can only be
| destroyed. Today, doing that would be counterproductive
| to PRC because so much of their domestic industry depends
| on TSMC, but the US has forced TSMC to impose sanctions
| on PRC's military. This is an existential threat to the
| PRC. If the sanctions continue, or are removed but could
| plausibly be reimposed, and TSMC remains strategically
| important, at some point PRC leadership will act to
| remove the military advantage this gives the US and its
| satellites over them, even if that means paving Taiwan
| with Trinitite. The alternative is to be unable to
| respond to military attacks from the US.
|
| Reducing exports only improves your economy if the
| exports are stolen, for example in the Congo Free State
| or the Irish Potato Famine. Weaker forms of this are
| known as "Dutch disease" or "the resource curse". This is
| very much not the case in PRC. Historically, export-led
| industrialization has been by far the most important
| cause of economic growth. By contrast, your prescription
| of import-substitution industrialization has failed
| everywhere it was tried, including, for decades, in PRC.
|
| Increased exports leads to increased specialization and
| increased capitalization, which increase productivity.
| Unless, again, we're talking about enslaved laborers who
| are not in a position to capture any value from their
| increased productivity, this increased productivity leads
| to increased earnings, which increases domestic
| consumption. This has been known for centuries and is
| agreed on by virtually all economists.
|
| Your implications that Chinese people do not value
| education, and that lack of education causes low
| consumption in China, could hardly be more false. Chinese
| culture has prized education highly for thousands of
| years. It's one of the key distinguishing features of
| Chinese culture. Expensive private tutoring companies
| were a hot startup sector until the government crackdown.
| 314 wrote:
| Five digit years are annoying difficult to parse. Adding
| leading zeros is redundant and wrong. Once you move away
| from the treating the non-zero leading digits as
| significant it raise awkward questions like: why five
| digits instead of six?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Very little of your comment is true. I attribute
| increasing vitriol and false statements being thrown
| around as a symptom of our increasingly escalating cold
| war with China.
|
| It is interesting to see how dramatically opinion has
| cooled on China in the past few years, simply because
| they have become a great power competitor.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Likewise, treating everyone you disagree with as completely
| insane; devoid of any reasonable motivations is a lazy
| hand-wavy viewpoint. It'll also make you prone to suck up
| any and all propaganda that aligns with your biases.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > you prone to suck up any and all propaganda that aligns
| with your biases.
|
| A phenomena that is very clear in threads about China.
| chaorace wrote:
| This kind of bluster is a mainstay of Chinese geopolitics. The
| law was intentionally written in an open-ended way so that the
| party always gets the final say on what "completely exhausted"
| should mean. It serves as a propaganda tool internally and a
| point of leverage externally -- the party never needs to
| actually act on the threat for it to serve a valuable purpose.
|
| With that being said, it's not that simple. Bluster isn't just
| a political tactic -- it also enables the military to slowly
| chip away at norms and edge closer towards a strategic
| advantage (e.g.: progressively violating more and more of
| Taiwan's sovereign airspace). If the party could have things
| their way, the military would merely continue pushing the
| envelope until one day a D-Day assault force seemingly randomly
| washes up on Taiwan's doorstep.
| treis wrote:
| Nitpick, but AFAIK China hasn't violated Taiwan's airspace.
| Taiwan says they'd treat it as an act of war if they did.
|
| Taiwan has an Air Defense Identification Zone where they
| track aircraft and aircraft entering it are supposed to
| identify themselves. This extends over the Chinese mainland
| and it's this zone that everyone talks about China
| "violating". But it's Chinese airspace and ultimately they
| have the right to fly there without notifying Taiwan.
| hunglee2 wrote:
| not a nitpick at all, stating facts never is, regardless of
| the downvotes
| O__________O wrote:
| Chinese missile went directly over the island near the
| capital of Taiwan:
|
| - https://japan-forward.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/JF-
| Grap...
|
| Source:
|
| - https://japan-forward.com/editorial-chinas-missile-
| tantrum-t...
| cameldrv wrote:
| > progressively violating more and more of Taiwan's sovereign
| airspace
|
| Just in terms of international law, the Chinese flights near
| Taiwan are provocative but don't violate any laws. The U.S.
| and Russia still do this sort of thing all the time. An ADIZ
| is not sovereign airspace.
| kurthr wrote:
| Launching so many missiles over a space of 36 hours that
| you entirely close airspace and waterways (and apparently
| over the island) is a little different from flying an
| airplane at the edge of controlled airspace.
|
| https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220805-chinese-
| missi...
|
| That happened during the Pelosi trip in August, and the
| jingoists were angry it didn't go further. The likelihood
| of an effective air/sea embargo on Taiwan is more likely
| than an initial invasion.
| lossolo wrote:
| International law is not a good example here because
| actually if you look at international law then Taiwan is
| part of China and formally it's considered as part of China
| by US, EU etc. Taiwan is not a state from perspective of
| international law so from this perspective it doesn't have
| sovereign airspace.
| frankharv wrote:
| I thought China snubbed their noses at International
| rulings regarding the South China Sea? Now they get
| respect from same authorities? Can't have it both ways.
| Join world system or reject it.
|
| https://www.cfr.org/councilofcouncils/global-memos/hague-
| tri...
| dirtyid wrote:
| >snubbed their noses
|
| The PCA "rulings" aren't international law because UN
| (which PRC accept as international system) has no formal
| position on them / has not adopted any parts of the
| decision. Ergo, PRC's SCS position is consistent with
| international law - like the actual one at UN, not make
| believe US "rules based order" which was behind PCA
| lawfare campaign and the ongoing propaganda.
|
| PRC is more firmly within bounds of the "world system",
| versus US who tries to enforce FONAPs despite not
| ratifying UNCLOS, and doesn't respect the kind of
| international law that it accused PRC of violating, see
| ITLOS ruling (an actual UN ruling) regarding UK/US
| military base on Chagos/Mauritius/Diego Garcia.
| VictorPath wrote:
| > Taiwan's sovereign airspace
|
| Well, only 13 countries recognize Taiwan as a sovereign
| country - such as the 10,000 people of the 21 square
| kilometer island Naura.
|
| Also, Taiwan occupies Kinmen Island in the bay of Xiamen's
| harbor on the PRC mainland. The island is in the Xiamen
| harbor and is 10 km from the city of Xiamen. So any PRC
| planes flying around Xiamen are "violating Taiwan's sovereign
| airspace" (which almost no one recognizes as "sovereign" -
| one of the main parties on Taiwan acknowledges Taiwan and the
| mainland are all one country).
| rmah wrote:
| It's complicated. Even Taiwan doesn't recognize Taiwan
| (Republic of China) as a sovereign nation, separate and
| distinct from the Peoples Republic of China. There are
| Taiwanese political groups that do want that but they
| haven't gotten their way so far.
|
| Either way, you probably meant that 13 nations have full
| and formal diplomatic relationships with Taiwan. Which, btw
| does not include the US, Japan or any EU nations.
| soperj wrote:
| It's not really that complicated. After WW2 the
| Communists drove the Republic of China govt out of
| mainland China. So mainland China is controlled by the
| communists and Taiwan by the remnants of the Republic of
| China government. Republic of China government still
| claims to be the rightful government of all of China
| (Taiwan included), same with the Communist government.
| greggsy wrote:
| Exactly - they're not constrained by the same four-ish year
| terms held in most democratic countries, and are able to play
| out twenty- and even fifty-year scenarios without too much
| domestic uncertainty.
|
| That strategy manifests in that slow chipping away: they
| don't need to do things all at once.
| chrischen wrote:
| It also manifests in potentially bad management that keeps
| itself going such as the current administration's braindead
| covid policies.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Braindead from an American perspective, it is also likely
| those policies have averted upwards of 4 million deaths.
| chrischen wrote:
| Actually I live in Japan and Japan has implemented
| exactly 0 lockdowns. While policies have reduced the
| number of people walking about, there are still more
| people shoulder to shoulder on a daily basis than
| anywhere in the US.
| [deleted]
| d_graeme wrote:
| Exactly. Tbh its constantly surprising why Americans view
| the CCPs zero-covid policy as a failure. Even the most
| pessimistic reports (based on actual facts, not tabloid-
| driven wishful thinking) acknowledges that China has
| avoided at least 2 million+ deaths through their zero
| covid policy. Is the right to life no longer a human
| right? Or have a lot of us so internalized anti-China
| propaganda that we're no longer able to think logically?
| [deleted]
| chrischen wrote:
| I could make the same baseless argument that many people
| also died due to the over restrictive policies and
| draconian imprisonment tactics.
|
| Of course 0-covid is only possible if it is maintained
| forever, because like it or not the rest of the world
| still has covid.
| d_graeme wrote:
| So in your version of reality, 2 million+ Chinese have
| died due to 'over restrictive policies and draconian
| imprisonment tactics' post covid-19.
| kipchak wrote:
| I'm not sure it's the best approach, but I would figure
| they would wait until circulating Covid strains were
| acceptably less harmful and then reopen.
| chrischen wrote:
| That's already happening and it was the more mild omicron
| strain causing the latest lockdowns and the resurgence.
|
| Their lockdowns are politically motivated: saving face
| because they prematurely declared victory, and a need to
| avoid dependence on western vaccines due to the
| ineffectiveness of their own vaccines--the latter really
| just a roundabout way to save face.
|
| If you understood Chinese culture, you'd know that saving
| face is pretty important and makes you do crazy things.
| dQw4w9WgXcQ wrote:
| > Is the right to life no longer a human right?
|
| Ah yes, China, comes to the top of the list when I think
| of protectors of human life. One-child policies, welding
| people into their apartment buildings, corralling them
| into COSTCOs [1] like they're farm animals being loaded
| into a semi-truck. Such benevolence.
|
| > Or have a lot of us so internalized anti-China
| propaganda that we're no longer able to think logically?
|
| Nah, more likely you have been drinking the pro-China
| propaganda like a 7-11 Big Gulp.
|
| [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Costco/comments/xgvlm6/video
| _of_peo...
| whimsicalism wrote:
| The fact remains that if US policies were implemented in
| China, it would mean the tacit acceptance of killing 4-5
| million people.
| free652 wrote:
| a) we don't know exactly what would happen if China
| implemented US policies. So that's not a fact, thats a
| hypothesis.
|
| b) China lies all the time. That's a fact. May be 5
| million died from covid there. who knows.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation_by_
| Chi...
| [deleted]
| d_graeme wrote:
| It's actually 50 million dead, not 5 million. And some
| experts even say, that possibly up to 200 million Chinese
| have died from covid so far. All those repeated lockdowns
| and city-wide mass tests are just being done for the
| 'lolz'.
|
| P.S. I wore my tin-foil hat while posting the above. It's
| pretty similar to the one you're wearing.
| CommunityPoster wrote:
| It's not a fact, come on. Many countries that didn't
| choose to lock down their population did better.
| Actually, since vitamin D deficiency is a risk factor, it
| may have increased deaths and decreased the overall
| health of the population.
| d_graeme wrote:
| So between a country that implements extremely
| restrictive (some would say 'heartlessly' restrictive)
| policies in order to safeguard the lives of their
| vulnerable elderly population, and another country (the
| 'land of the free') which is so 'free' it allows 1
| million+ of its citizens to die, and whose politicians
| have shown on multiple occasions that they care more
| about saving the country's economy than saving the lives
| of their citizens? Which would you say is a 'protector of
| Human life' as opposed to a 'protector of the economy'.
|
| I would tell you to stop drinking the kool-aid, but it
| would be a waste of effort. Rational arguments won't work
| against emotion-driven beliefs and delusions (China -
| Those Evil Communists. 'West' - Lands of the Free and
| Birthplace of Freedom and All that is Good).
| gadflyinyoureye wrote:
| Could the same deaths have been prevented by deploying
| better policies? Remember that millions of people we
| forcibly locked in their homes. They faced food
| shortages. They have their lives ruined because they
| couldn't make a living. All of this because the CCP wants
| zero Covid rather than a rational policy of limiting the
| most at risk to the disease and allowing the population
| to get natural immunity from getting sick.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I do not think 4 million people+ died due to lockdowns in
| China.
| gadflyinyoureye wrote:
| Directly? No. By suicide and future complications due to
| having their life upended/destroyed yeah.
|
| The CCP should have purchase novavax for the shot (they
| still should given China's low jab rate) and allowed the
| majority of people to live their lives. Covid for the
| majority posses little risk.
| lovich wrote:
| Kinda hard to take this seriously when you're using anti
| vaxxer slang(jab). If you didn't mean it that way just
| giving you a heads up that it immediately clocked as an
| anti vaxx dog whistle.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I disagree that that is anti-vaxxer slang, I think it is
| just a Britishism. Indeed I believe their govt calls it a
| jab.
| lovich wrote:
| May be cultural differences then. In the US and Canada
| the anti vaxxers will pejoratively refer to the vaccine
| as "the jab" or taking it as "getting the jab"
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| All sorts of people have called getting a vaccine
| "getting the jab" for decades. It isn't some secret code
| for "I don't believe that vaccines are safe"
| whimsicalism wrote:
| 4 million people died due to suicide due to lockdowns in
| China?
| gadflyinyoureye wrote:
| There will be a lot of longer term mental damage. https:/
| /www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3182775/huma...
| [deleted]
| bee_rider wrote:
| They've also saved themselves some of the long-term cost
| of long COVID, which is a fun mystery we've signed up for
| in the US. Also weren't they working with a less
| effective vaccine?
| badcppdev wrote:
| They haven't actually dealt with Covid yet. Their
| immunisation rates are low and the vaccines they've used
| are not the best. It's an ongoing process where they are
| still flattening the curve. They aren't back to normal.
|
| And this happened yesterday:
| https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-delays-release-
| eco... . The market opinion is that the financial data is
| very bad so they don't want to release it. And this is
| quite coupled to their ongoing Covid policies.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > Their immunisation rates are low
|
| I'm not sure that is true in general, but it is
| unfortunately true for the elderly in China - precisely
| the population they want to protect. They've sort of
| screwed themselves by not vaxxing the elderly at high
| rates.
| CommunityPoster wrote:
| Sweden did not enforce any lockdowns and managed to have
| a lower death rate than France which enforced many
| punitive measures on its population.
|
| I therefore hardly think your reports are true, or right.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111779/coronavirus-
| deat...
| d_graeme wrote:
| Are you honestly comparing France's relatively
| lackadaisical lockdowns to that of China (where entire
| cities experienced total lockdowns, with households only
| being allowed to send out 1 person to get food)?
|
| And using Covid deaths per million global stats:
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-
| deat...
|
| The data on the linked page above shows that China has a
| Per Capita covid death rate of 10.8 per million, while
| that of France is 2,115.56 deaths per million. Even if
| you were to take the side of the tin-foil hat
| conspiracists and multiply China's covid death rate by a
| factor of 10, France would still have a covid death rate
| that's 100 times (100 TIMES!) that of the Chinese.
| lovich wrote:
| More likely it's many people who are of the mindset that
| lockdowns did nothing/weren't worth it, that's prevalent
| in the US. If you think the activity is useless then it
| would look pretty bad given all the downsides of
| lockdowns
| chrischen wrote:
| Probably pretty useless against Omicron. It did its job
| for Delta and predecessor variants.
| neilc wrote:
| > Is the right to life no longer a human right?
|
| That's not what "the right to life" means. There are lots
| of policy decisions which have tradeoffs that result in
| more or less life lost. For example, the government could
| require that all car engines have a maximum speed of 25
| MPH. That would empirically reduce the # of lives lost in
| automobile accidents, but society has judged the tradeoff
| (in terms of convenience, transportation time/cost, etc.)
| to not be worth it -- and that tradeoff does not
| constitute "violating the right to life".
| ouid wrote:
| Nah, fuck it. We're allowed to commit to war too. Xi Jingping
| is a tyrannical insane dictator and his successor will be
| worse. He needs to be stood up to, and no one is in a better
| position to do that than the US.
| oDot wrote:
| How about you send your own ass to war instead of others'
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| dont__panic wrote:
| How do you know "his people" like him, when anyone who
| criticizes the Chinese government either disappears or
| shuts up when the government threatens their family?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Why Xi Jinping and not, say, MbS?
| ouid wrote:
| what the fuck are you on about? Just because situations are
| analogous doesnt mean they're the same. Both China and
| Taiwan are problems of global importance. Saudi Arabia is
| not.
|
| Lets use an analogy. Say you're playing a team chess match.
| Each board has a different prize associated with winning
| it. My question to you is how you should organize your team
| as a function of those prizes.
|
| I don't think Yemen should be the one to stand up to China
| for precisely the reason that i dont think america should
| be the one to stand up to the saudis. Our resources are
| better invested elsewhere, and in particular, in
| confronting the tyrannical leader of China.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| > Both China and Taiwan are problems of global
| importance. Saudi Arabia is not.
|
| Do you know what OPEC is
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Engage with less vitriol :) it's in the spirit of the
| guidelines.
|
| What is the standard that we use for deciding what leader
| is worthy of intervention against? Is it the level of
| support among their own population? Is it how much they
| seek to export their ideology and take over other
| countries?
|
| I understand the analogy you're making with Chess. But
| perhaps you could also view it another way: MbS is a
| terrible dictator (with even less legitimacy than the
| still-illegitimate Chinese political process). The US
| could easily crush him, compared to do anything to
| seriously confront China's CCP domestically.
|
| Given that our resources would have a direct impact on
| people's lives in Saudi & Yemen, whereas we don't have
| much ability to have any impact in China, why is it
| better to invest our resources in fighting Xi Jinping?
| axus wrote:
| MBS isn't making claims on his neighbors territory for his
| own.
| laverya wrote:
| I think he's literally in the process of invading and
| subjugating a neighbor, actually. The Saudis might not
| _call_ what 's going on in Yemen an invasion, but it sure
| looks like it from here.
| Maursault wrote:
| > by any means to cause the fact of Taiwan's secession from
| China, or that major incidents entailing Taiwan's secession
| from China should occur,
|
| The irony here is that it is in fact China that seceded from
| Taiwan.
| hackandthink wrote:
| Does it make sense for PRC to blockade Taiwan and stop TMSC
| delivering/producing chips?
|
| I guess only if PRC is embargoed (US Sanctions TMSC). Maybe
| next year.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-gives-reprieve-least-t...
| authpor wrote:
| no it doesn't.
|
| that would be equivalent to shooting themselves in the ocean.
|
| for now, they are still under the thumb of the american navy.
| how else would they ship out all the consumer goods? and to
| whom? USA is their biggest buyer.
| hackandthink wrote:
| OK: PRC blockades Taiwan leads to american navy blockading
| PRC
|
| Nobody wants that.
| hardware2win wrote:
| Seems like bluff
| ambicapter wrote:
| Sounds like normal foreign relations/diplomacy. It's all grey
| areas where politicians politick and diplomats maneuver to
| get what they want without anyone losing face.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| But when politicians and diplomats make a miscalculation,
| soldiers die.
| computerfriend wrote:
| Not just soldiers.
| mastax wrote:
| Chinese law should almost never be considered something that
| constrains the government, and especially not in grandiose
| cases like this. The government will do as it pleases,
| regardless of the law. That is more of a strong press release
| than a binding proposition.
|
| However, I am not arguing that China is not serious about
| retaking Taiwan. They are deathly serious.
| intrasight wrote:
| "Chinese law" - an oxymoron ;)
|
| They said they will retake Taiwan and they can and few will
| really care. So of course they will.
| ericmay wrote:
| Whether they can or not is highly questionable. "Few will
| really care" is certainly false.
|
| And in terms of nation states caring, that's also incorrect
| because Taiwan is a linchpin of US Pacific foreign policy
| and for the US to _do nothing_ or "not care" about Taiwan
| being invaded would signal to allies in the region that
| they cannot count on the United States and that they should
| find their own defense arrangements. It would de facto kick
| the US out of the Pacific and end global hegemony
| overnight.
|
| Frankly, Taiwan is a _big fucking deal_ w.r.t US, Japanese,
| and Australian national defense concerns and is a big deal
| to other nations such as New Zealand.
| intrasight wrote:
| I did mean few American voters
| tlear wrote:
| They can't, not even remotely close any time in the next 20
| years at least. Can you imagine what a landing beach would
| look like being pounded by drone spotted artillery? See war
| in Ukraine. Forget the approach, anti ship missiles, mines,
| sheer volume of logistics needed. Stepping on the landing
| beach is a suicide without absolutely astronomical
| advantage in air power and ability to suffer huge
| attrition, even then.. 155mm hidden under camo/thermal
| nets, DJI drone rigged with magazines of small bombs..
| Kyiv, Kharkiv, Kherson Childs play, this would make Diep
| and Galipoli look like walk in the park.
|
| I would go as far as to say that US Army + Marines + Navy
| could not land on Taiwan without suffering multiple
| brigades of attrition AFTER at least a year long blockade
| and air campaign. It is that hard.
|
| PRC has to surpass US in GDP, then spend 10-20 years of US
| level military spending, then maybe.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| China can just send cruise missiles to start and ignore
| beaches.
|
| A major power with 1.2 billion people can take an island
| of 20 million 80 miles away from its shores.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| If they want to make a desert and call it peace, perhaps.
| Seems like a bad strategy to smash a crown jewel before
| you annex it.
| intrasight wrote:
| They will take it without a fight
| Apocryphon wrote:
| That simple sentence is doing a lot of heavy dodging to
| ignore all of the points brought up in the post upthread
| about the inherent difficulties involved in naval
| landings.
|
| Now, if you're going to say economic pressures will lead
| to political settlements without conflict, then that's a
| discussion to be had.
| authpor wrote:
| this is applicable to most countries...
|
| wriggling around the law needs only an emergency.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| They are not retaking Taiwan. They never had Taiwan. Taiwain
| is the last bastion of the democratic government of china.
| kragen wrote:
| Chiang democratic? Sheesh.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiang_Kai-
| shek#Mass_deaths_un...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_Republic_
| o...:
|
| _Following the ROC government 's retreat to Taiwan on 7
| December 1949, the Temporary Provisions together with
| martial law made the country an authoritarian one-party
| state despite the constitution. Democratization began in
| the 1980s. Martial law was lifted in 1987, and in 1991 the
| Temporary Provisions were repealed._
|
| ROC _has_ been democratic since the 01990s, but it was an
| authoritarian dictatorship that killed millions of its own
| people at the time the Communists drove it out of the
| mainland (only to exceed its atrocities with their own) and
| for decades afterwards.
| digianarchist wrote:
| The KMT have an awful track record as being horrifically
| authoritarian.
|
| OP isn't wrong though _contemporary_ Taiwan is a model
| democracy in a region where there are few.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I think pinning Taiwan as "last bastion" of some
| democracy that existed before is incorrect as any honest
| history of the KMT can see.
| kragen wrote:
| Even _dishonest_ histories of the KMT are rarely so
| dishonest as to claim the ROC was _democratically
| governed_ before 01949, however much they try to
| whitewash the mass killings. Disinformation has to be
| plausible to be effective.
| rzwitserloot wrote:
| > can't be caught off guard by China as EU was caught off guard
| by Russia.
|
| There's always a bigger fish.
|
| The last time nations were obsessed with autarky, we got WW1,
| and soon after, WW2.
|
| Most countries (i.e. every country not suffering from a drastic
| case of the resource curse) have the nature that if they trade
| a lot with another country, either country would lose economic
| value if they invade the other, _even if_ that invasion goes
| off stellarly well with almost no losses: The populace doesn't
| like being subjugated and produces significantly less.
|
| In an inbalanced trade/dependency relationship, such as Saudi
| Arabia's oil vs. the rest of the world, or Russia's gas vs.
| europe, it's actually _both_ sides that are dependent on the
| other. It's the dutch curse all over again.
|
| Go back in time:
|
| * Europe wants more gas to grow its economy, and doesn't have
| enough on its own soil. * Russia has more than plenty and is
| willing to sell it. * We enter a period of years where europe
| companies and countries more and more build industry that isn't
| going to work out without the relatively cheap russian gas. As
| these industries continue to succeed and russia continues to be
| a reliable supplier, ever more industry takes the leap and
| becomes dependent on it. * This sounds like handing off quite
| the 'weapon' to your supplier, but, the problem is, that
| supplier is now just as dependent on this relationship as the
| consumer is: Russian economy falls apart without the trade of
| europe-produced goods (a lot of it by industries that run on
| russian gas), just as fast as europe falls apart without
| russian gas.
|
| Thus, if russia were to invade europe, russia's economic value
| falls off a cliff, and the same applies to a lesser extent to
| europe. The only reason europe could in theory invade russia
| (assumes a perfect invasion, no nukes, no significant
| resistance at all, just a dejected populace), is because
| russia's primary value is not particularly dependent on human
| capital.
|
| My theory about why this theory didn't work out and russia
| invades ukraine is a mix of:
|
| * Misunderstanding by Russia of world/Europe response to this
| invasion. * Too much power in one person, who, like most people
| surrounded by yay-sayers for 20 years, has lost grip on
| reality. * Most of all, a ticking clock: Europe has stated they
| want to wean themselves off of fossil fuel within a decade or
| so. And so they should, but it's a torpedo to the trade
| dependency relationship between europe and russia.
|
| That last one is the economic argument: Russia had to do
| something or their economy would fall apart if europe delivers
| on their plans to rapidly reduce their dependence on (russian-
| supplied) gas.
|
| Thus, autarky -> war. Because if you're doing economically
| better than your neighbouring country, you produce more weapons
| and more people, and just invade em, why not.
|
| We can trade the risk of what happened to europe, or what is
| likely to happen if china and the west become autarkic relative
| to each other (namely, that china invades taiwan) - with nukes
| and MAD. But that's got its own problems.
| toyg wrote:
| _> Russia had to do something or their economy would fall
| apart_
|
| Ukraine would solve nothing in the Russian economy.
|
| Ukraine would simply secure two things: Crimea (which is
| essential to Russia and was strategically exposed), and
| complete control on all main gas infrastructure towards
| Europe. It's not a coincidence that the invasion was launched
| when it became clear that the new gasduct to the North was
| dead in the water (because of American opposition to it):
| Putin wanted to make gas furniture to Europe strategically
| independent from other countries (i.e. completely dependent
| on Russia), one way or the other. The original calculation
| was probably "You don't give me Nordstream, so I'll take
| everything else". Obviously it didn't go as planned.
| rzwitserloot wrote:
| If I created the impression that this invasion was a smart
| thing, I didn't intend to do that. It's more: Russia is up
| the creek without a paddle and wanted to do something, on
| the bizarre but common logic of 'well, doing _something_ is
| better than _nothing_". Or similarly atrociously reasoned
| bullpuckey such as 'we have to have a bufferstate because
| otherwise NATO will attack us. Us, being a state with
| ICBMs".
| phlipski wrote:
| "That last one is the economic argument: Russia had to do
| something or their economy would fall apart if europe
| delivers on their plans to rapidly reduce their dependence on
| (russian-supplied) gas."
|
| Putin didn't have to invade! If he was truly worried about
| Russia's economy he could have (and should have) gone about
| instituting reforms/policies to encourage economic
| diversification and growth. I fail to see how even a
| successful invasion of Ukraine results in economic upside for
| Russia. They were doomed to fight an insurgency for years
| which costs money, or they're going to spend resources
| rebuilding a country they just fought a war in.
| rzwitserloot wrote:
| > Putin didn't have to invade! If he was truly worried
| about Russia's economy he could have (and should have) gone
| about instituting reforms/policies to encourage economic
| diversification and growth.
|
| Yes, absolutely. Russia, 60m people (or how much is it?
| More even) notwithstanding, is essentially a petrostate. It
| was too hard to try to get the population-driven productive
| elements to compete against the easy resource money.
|
| I mean, Norway is right fucking there. This war is on them,
| entirely, for failing to prepare for the inevitable day
| when the natural resources are no longer enough to bankroll
| the entire state.
|
| But, doing it _now_ is not possible without major political
| upset, so the major political players, not wanting to be
| 'upset' out of a window (hey, you live by the sword, you
| die by the sword, I'm sure the political elite is aware of
| the usual way to deal with higher ups that need to be
| lesser higher up: By taking that literally) - start a war.
| phlipski wrote:
| I don't get the feeling that the majority of the Russian
| Elite wanted this war. They only started getting suicided
| after the war started and they criticized Putin. Sure the
| ex-military, arm-chair warriors and nationalist
| delusionists wanted this war, but that's a small
| minority. America has it's share of crazy vocal "bomb,
| bomb, bomb" folks too - see John Bolton, John McCain,
| Lindsay Graham, Pompeo etc....
|
| Outside of Putin's delusions of grandeur for an empire
| that never existed I still fail to see ANY upside for
| Russia for this war.
| baybal2 wrote:
| matthewaveryusa wrote:
| >Europe has stated they want to wean themselves off of fossil
| fuel within a decade or so.
|
| And to think that in the 80s Regan tried (but opposed by
| business) to impose sanctions on europe because of the USSR
| gas pipelines. What a circus. Europe got hooked on USSR gas
| in less than 20 years, and has been planning to wean off for
| 10.
|
| Europe after WW2 relied on the US to defend against Russian
| aggression, and not even 30 years later, in a master class of
| cleverness played both sides by buying, and then becoming
| dependent, on Russian gas, only for the Russians to become
| aggressive again.
|
| Where the cleverness falls apart is that cheap Russian gas
| was on bought time, and now all the europeans have to show
| for it is massive debt, expensive social programs, a lack-
| luster military and closed nuclear plants. Good job...
| badpun wrote:
| > The last time nations were obsessed with autarky, we got
| WW1
|
| Were they? I thought WWI happened in the midst of first huge
| wave of globalization - to the point that no one thought war
| was possible, as it would mean collapse of international
| trade, and huge losses that come with it.
| cjf4 wrote:
| Many thought it was not only possible but inevitable: The
| Schlieffen plan, French revanchism, general military
| buildup across Europe, and of course Biskmark's 1888
| comment:
|
| "One day the great European War will come out of some
| damned foolish thing in the Balkans."
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| You're both wrong. Many people subscribed to each belief.
|
| The economists, globalists and industry people believed
| that it could never happen. The military, nationalist and
| political folks figured it would be inevitable, or at
| very least if it happened they had to win.
|
| Many people subscribed to the argument of the economists
| and globalists in more democratic countries because it
| was a comforting illusion the people in the more
| militaristic autocracies, believed it was inevitable, and
| incidentally were the nations that hold the most
| culpability for WW1, Germany, Russia, Austro-Hungarian
| empire.
|
| Wait a minute why is all of my description starting to
| sound terribly and horribly familiar to what is going on
| now?
|
| Seriously those that will continue to posist that war
| will not come are foolish and don't realizing that the
| first steps are already in progress with the information
| war being waged right now through cyberspace.
|
| Note I don't want a war to happen and think it will be
| horrible and terrible, but all the elements are in place
| for it to happen. A shifting balance of power into a
| multipolar world, multiple nations either facing decline
| or ascendancy, realpolitik becoming the norm in
| international relations, it all looks very grim unless
| some very wise, peace loving and capable leaders emerge
| on the world stage soon.
| rswail wrote:
| Or, like the UK, the days of Russian empire are over and
| the new bi-polar world will be the NATO/India/AUNZ/Asia
| vs China/Africa.
|
| So another Cold War for the 21st Century if we continue
| to rely on a mercantilist attitude in a world where
| networking is more important than some trade links.
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| No the cold war required a bipolar world for it's
| stability with MAD being the keystone that held the arch
| together. That was the only way for it to be stable and
| why we didn't have a massive war, with all actions being
| confined to small proxy wars.
|
| We are in a multi-polar world now, Trump pointed out and
| many people are starting to agree, about whether or not
| the US really should be so closely aligned with Europe,
| NATO will probably stick around but it might not be
| enough. Meanwhile India has happily agreed to buy all the
| Russian oil that Europe isn't, which is done to spit in
| the face of the sanctions imposed on Russia. The mutli-
| polar world right now is US, India, China, EU, and Russia
| which is still a regional power, each of which have
| different interests.
|
| The problem is China and the EU are facing huge
| demographic shortfalls in the next 30 years that will
| pose existential threats to their society, Russia is in
| the same boat. The EU is having this problem addressed to
| a certain extent through immigration but the
| nationalistic racist attitudes of the Chinese people make
| this a less palatable option for them. It is likely that
| the demographic cliff is going to continue to stress
| Chinese society to the breaking point until it snaps and
| begins an international incident that could quickly
| escalate to a global war. The best thing the US could do
| to preserve it's interests is do whatever we need to to
| schmooze up to India and cement an alliance with them, as
| they represent the best regional challenger to China and
| if they end up on the side of the CCP will cause huge
| problems as at that point a Bejing-Delhi alliance will be
| able to exert control over 1/3 > of the world's
| population. (This assumes they will be able to control
| all of Southeast Asia through soft and hard power)
| authpor wrote:
| it seems that only our instutions, or big chunks of the
| whole global trade system, want this war; but this this
| point, a lot of those systems are automated by rules and
| regulations and a overly complicated network that become
| inentelligible to the people 'running' it.
|
| nobody that is alive and sentient (in the traditional
| sense) wants a war... and yet, we all see it looming.
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| Sounds a lot like how the assassination of the heir
| appearant of the Austro-Hungarian Empire led to the UK
| declaring war on Germany for marching through Belgium.
|
| No one wanted the war, many knew it would be horrible,
| and yet it led to the most nightmarish collective human
| experience in human history.
| Retric wrote:
| It's less that Europe is using more Russian gas than they had
| insufficient infrastructure to get alternatives to Russian
| natural gas.
|
| Ukraine was invaded because they have a great deal of oil and
| natural gas and could therefore significantly impact the
| Russian economy especially if the world starts to reduce
| Fossil fuel use.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| It's also in the US' strategic interests to simply make it
| clear that China can't have Taiwan regardless of the TSMC
| however
| tarsinge wrote:
| Of course it is in the US strategic interests, the problem is
| having strategic interests doesn't automatically give the US
| rights to intervene. Contrary to Ukraine (plain violation of
| the territorial integrity of a sovereign nation) the
| situation in Taiwan is complicated (for those who doubt it
| please at least make the effort to read the Wikipedia entry).
| Now given recent history I don't doubt the US will not let it
| slip when their strategic interests are at risk, but at least
| be lucid. Edit: To clear doubts I should add I would
| obviously prefer Taiwan stay an independent free democratic
| country. I'm only tempering the argument I sometimes see
| (maybe wrongly here) "it's in our best interests" = "it's the
| right thing".
| randomopining wrote:
| Taiwan as a piece of land has much more strategic
| importance than Ukraine. Ukraine's grain and terrain are
| the two things that are important about it from a
| utilitarian sense.
| jychang wrote:
| Ukraine as a piece of land was Russia's only warmwater
| port.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Russia has plenty of allies it can use as a warm water
| port and Crimea was already lost.
| caskstrength wrote:
| > Ukraine as a piece of land was Russia's only warmwater
| port.
|
| Why is this obviously incorrect statement that can be
| easily disproved by just checking the map is being
| repeated again and again on HN? It is only second in
| popularity to "Russia invaded Ukraine to prevent NATO on
| its borders" which can also be trivially disproved by
| finding Estonia or Latvia on the map...
| Paradigma11 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novorossiysk
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murmansk
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladivostok
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Petersburg
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaliningrad ......
| rr888 wrote:
| StopHammoTime wrote:
| "Give".
|
| Taiwan have been preparing for this war since its
| inception. Taiwan will be going to war without Western
| support and I think most Taiwanese would prefer Taiwan
| burnt to the ground before surrendering without a fight.
|
| If someone invaded my country there would be two outcomes:
| we win or I'm dead.
| conradfr wrote:
| Except the Taiwanese people.
| Huh1337 wrote:
| These people would rather be dead than under Russian rule.
| Why would 97% of them support continuing defense if not?
|
| And don't forget that when Russians still thought they're
| going to win, they brought in mobile crematoriums and
| started filtrating people and sending them off to Siberia
| if not torturing and murdering them. It was never a
| question of "no war and survive" VS "die in war" - but "no
| war, die anyways" VS "war, possibly survive"
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > These people would rather be dead than under Russian
| rule. Why would 97% of them support continuing defense if
| not?
|
| Certainly this is not true of Crimea, where people have
| been independently polled by Western NGOs and the weight
| of the evidence is they want to be part of Russia.
|
| > It was never a question of "no war and survive" VS "die
| in war" - but "no war, die anyways" VS "war, possibly
| survive"
|
| Your thesis is that if Russia won they would murder a
| substantial %-ge of the population in mobile
| crematoriums?
| Huh1337 wrote:
| > Certainly this is not true of Crimea, where people have
| been independently polled by Western NGOs and the weight
| of the evidence is they want to be part of Russia.
|
| You mean "a very slightly bigger half of them", right?
| And that was before all this shit went down and Russians
| started to mobilize them. I wonder how they feel now,
| don't you?
|
| > Your thesis is that if Russia won they would murder a
| substantial %-ge of the population in mobile
| crematoriums?
|
| Nah, my thesis is that Russia started with it
| immediately.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > You mean "a very slightly bigger half of them", right?
|
| Closer to 83% but I agree it has probably trended
| substantially downward in recent months.
|
| > Nah, my thesis is that Russia started with it
| immediately.
|
| Why didn't they do this mass murder in Crimea or Donetsk
| once they got effective control?
| lovich wrote:
| I mean, murdering and cremating isn't the only bit of
| genocide. They've also bern taking Ukrainian children and
| adopting them out to Russian families, and filtrating out
| Ukrainian adults across Russia.
|
| At the beginning and through most of the invasion they
| Russian stance was that Ukrainians are a fake people and
| don't actually exist. If I was getting invaded by a group
| saying my people weren't real I probably wouldn't give
| them the benefit of the doubt that they'd treat me well
| or let me live if I laid down Armstrong
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Clearly denying Ukrainian identity & culture is part of
| the Russian project here and is linked to forced
| relocation/adoption.
|
| My question was merely on the claim that Russia desired
| to murder & cremate some >1% of the Ukrainian population.
| lovich wrote:
| It looks like the thread got stuck on a technicality
| around the cremations. I think I still agree with the
| initial, wider hypothesis the poster had with
|
| > It was never a question of "no war and survive" VS "die
| in war" - but "no war, die anyways" VS "war, possibly
| survive"
|
| Especially if, like most groups of humans as were tribal,
| the dissolution of your tribe is almost equivalent to not
| surviving
| Huh1337 wrote:
| Seems like we just don't know much about what they did
| there, yet. Let's see how many mass graves are there once
| Ukraine gets the land back. Are you going to put your
| money on it being 0? Or maybe they simply planned the
| genocide for later, you never know with these crazy
| dictators.
| dr-detroit wrote:
| [deleted]
| jcranmer wrote:
| > After seeing Ukraine turning into a WW1 quagmire
|
| Ukraine is nowhere _near_ a WW1 quagmire. The lines are far
| from static, and we 've seen one dramatic rout a month ago
| resulting from a competently-executed war of maneuver
| operation that was completely impossible in the WW1
| situation.
|
| It looks less like WW1 (a war that ultimately came down to
| bleeding men until one side ran out, at which point the war
| effort came flying off the rails extremely rapidly) and
| more like WW2 (a war of maneuver where applying sufficient
| overwhelming force in a narrow front could and did produce
| overwhelming breakthough--even if it took a very large
| stack of operational successes to ultimately prove
| victorious in the war).
| for1nner wrote:
| kibwen wrote:
| Found Elon's HN account.
| gdy wrote:
| "EU was caught off guard by Russia"
|
| You've got to be kidding me. Putin had been warning West since
| the Munich speech in 2007. [0]
|
| [0]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Munich_speech_of_Vladim...
| alexb_ wrote:
| Well if you've been warning someone for 14 years and
| literally nothing has happened, why is it unreasonable to be
| surprised?
| greedo wrote:
| Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, then Ukraine in 2014.
| Pretty sure that's "literally" something happening.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Yes, the warning signs were there, but the EU was merrily
| speeding past them, finding reasons to argue against all of
| the warning signs. NS2 is one of the most emblematic signs of
| this: it was clearly going to tie Germany's energy needs
| closer to an already-proven-unreliable partner (Russia),
| increase the ability of Russia to use gas transit as
| politics, countries like Poland and the US were screaming at
| the top of their lungs "THIS IS A BAD IDEA" and until
| February 2022, Germany was responding "it'll be fine, nothing
| bad will come of this."
|
| So I think it's fair to say that the EU was caught off guard
| by Russia, even if because of the EU's willful ignorance of
| affairs rather than Russian duplicity.
| gdy wrote:
| "already-proven-unreliable"
|
| How so?
| jcranmer wrote:
| Russia has switched off the gas before, such as when
| Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014.
|
| Hell, there's a Wikipedia page listing all of the Russia-
| Ukraine gas disputes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russi
| a%E2%80%93Ukraine_gas_dis...). One of the stated
| motivations for Nord Stream 2 was to improve reliability
| of gas to Europe in case Russia decided to cut off the
| gas because of a spat with one of the transit countries.
| computerfriend wrote:
| And yet, they were caught off guard.
| gdy wrote:
| No, they weren't.
| computerfriend wrote:
| It really seems that much of the EU thought Putin was
| bluffing right up until the end of February. EU leaders
| proudly saying they had personal assurances Russia
| wouldn't invade again. There was incredible amounts of
| inaction. Only a handful of countries were shipping
| weapons, mostly non-EU.
| gdy wrote:
| Sorry, you may claim that the EU was indulging in wishful
| thinking, but you can't call it 'caught off-guard'.
| [deleted]
| programmer_dude wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20221018123239/https://www.econo...
| valdiorn wrote:
| So, can someone explain to me why I can't get ANY chips for
| anything at all? Everything is out of stock that I use in my
| designs (Audio processing equipment). microprocessors,
| microcontrollers, ADCs, DACs, audio codecs, memory. Even bread
| and butter diodes were hard to source a few months ago. You name
| it, Mouser/Farnell/Digikey/the manufacturer doesn't have it. And
| if they do, it's priced at 500% MSRP.
|
| It may be "swinging the other way" but we're at the very depth of
| the curve right now, and lead times are frequently 12-18 months.
| I can't see any evidence that it's swinging back, personally,
| maybe someone else does (like the writer of this article).
| nathas wrote:
| Check out the post by Schiit Audio's CEO (I think CEO?):
| https://www.head-fi.org/threads/schiit-happened-the-story-of...
|
| It looks like the audio sector was hit particularly hard by the
| war in Ukraine.
| MikePlacid wrote:
| I was absolutely confused regarding what kind of "tubes" this
| guy talks about. But when I saw 6N1P and recognized it
| immediately. Not the exact name, but the numbering scheme -
| each owner of a Russian TV would learn a numbering scheme for
| "tubes" sooner or later.
|
| It's interesting that Russia became (or remained as) an
| almost single supplier of this "outdated" technology.
|
| But still, these "tubes" are rather a niche product in the
| audio equipment market, no? We probably can't get a good
| enough insight looking just at them.
| MikePlacid wrote:
| > I was absolutely confused regarding what kind of "tubes"
| this guy talks about.
|
| In Russian these are called "lamps", not "tubes".
| Wohlf wrote:
| Not as niche as you think, it's a decent sized market
| segment with guitar amps.
| martincmartin wrote:
| I mean it's literally in TFA:
|
| "In late September Micron, an Idaho-based maker of memory
| chips, reported a 20% year-on-year fall in quarterly sales. A
| week later amd, a Californian chip designer, slashed its sales
| estimate for the third quarter by 16%. Within days Bloomberg
| reported that Intel plans to lay off thousands of staff,
| following a string of poor results"
|
| But most of the article is about how they're building new fabs
| in America, right when sales to China are being restricted. So
| its about a future surge in supply and reduction in demand.
| svnt wrote:
| Parent is talking about distributor stock and you are talking
| about sales.
|
| If your comment was accurate it would seem like we should
| have had distributor stock coming online after the pandemic
| shortages as companies push to get their orders in the queue
| before capacity goes offline due to conflict.
|
| I'm curious with parent -- my guess is just that the humans
| behind the companies got used to the profits and not sitting
| on inventory, which was always risky.
| yaantc wrote:
| Very different areas of semi. The Economist article is focused
| on the high end, most advanced nodes and their fabless users
| like AMD, NVidia.
|
| What you list is either analog of older nodes (~90 to 40nm).
| It's a very different world, with often different players. TSMC
| plays in the digital old nodes, but as I understand is not very
| motivated in investing in much new capacity, and try to push
| customers toward 22nm ULP (may work for some, but not all).
| Others are investing, but it takes time.
|
| So you start to see a glut at the high end, but still
| constraints in the analog / old nodes.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| When it comes to audio, it didn't help that AKM had a factory
| go up in flames[1], completely destroying most of it. It seems
| they've managed to shift production of some popular ADCs and
| DACs to other manufacturers[2] recently.
|
| As for other chips, part of it is the toilet paper effect. From
| what I've heard, companies are buying 5x or 10x what they
| normally buy, just to be sure they got parts for production.
| Since the situation is still bad, I'm guessing people are still
| doing it.
|
| Especially ICs are made in batches, so once it runs dry the
| manufacturer can't just print out another 10k units, they got
| other stuff lined up. I see for STM32s a lot of stock is
| expected at the end of this year or first half of next year,
| which lines up with what their CEO said that things will start
| stabilizing at the start of next year.
|
| I'm just a hobbyist who knows a few EEs though, so might be
| wrong. But this is my impression.
|
| [1]: https://www.audioholics.com/news/fire-destroys-akm-audio-
| chi...
|
| [2]: https://www.strata-gee.com/akm-responds-to-strata-gee-
| reques...
| bullen wrote:
| Everything can be predicted if you understand energy.
|
| Companies can't survive in a peak world without manufacturing
| crap. Sell more because your tools break.
|
| So now they are looking at how to do that under the premise of
| eternal growth:
|
| They will try to lock us down in the hardware = deprecate older
| hardware and force you to move to never software with TLS 1.3.
|
| That has never succeded because you can always hack everything =
| They will try to rent out the accounts.
|
| They allready started that process, but I'm not buying it. I have
| all the software I need under permanent license.
|
| Since processors now have peaked, everyone is buying all the
| computers they can, the really smart ones are buying low energy
| devices like Raspberry but 1151 Xeon is also sold out.
|
| Anything manufactured today will probably have hardware kill-
| switches or programmed obsolescence. For companies: "To not lock
| your customer down for eternity is suicide"...
|
| Edit: Loving the downvotes without comment...
| svnt wrote:
| Your argument doesn't hold together.
|
| Many traditional hardware companies are transitioning/have
| transitioned to some form of hybrid model or subscription
| service explicitly.
|
| We are actually looking at degrowth, not eternal growth.
|
| Processors may be near peaking but the Raspberry Pi is not a
| competitor with those processors.
|
| The reason stock is down is because of supply chain issues
| still overhanging from the pandemic.
| bullen wrote:
| That is what I mean with eternal growth... how can you
| missunderstand that?
|
| Raspberry 4 has 2Gflops/W where M1 has 2.5!!!
|
| Pandemic is not the problem. Energy and money is the problem.
|
| Edit: Premise = Promise yes.
| svnt wrote:
| I guess that is just more evidence that your message is
| unclear. Did you mean promise instead of premise?
|
| Energy/money is also the solution, so if you see it as the
| problem then you are probably missing the specific details.
| svnt wrote:
| I don't think I can edit my previous comment in response to
| your edit around Gflops/W, but I still don't know anyone
| trading off rPi for M1. Do you?
| BirAdam wrote:
| > Everything can be predicted if you understand energy
|
| Energy, while vital, is not the only component in any part of
| an economy.
|
| > Companies can't survive in a peak world without manufacturing
| crap. Sell more because your tools break.
|
| This cuts both ways. If tools break too often or too easily,
| someone else will manufacture a tool that lasts. That tool will
| then sell millions or even billions of units. This can sustain
| a company for quite a long time.
|
| > So now they are looking at how to do that under the premise
| of eternal growth
|
| No one believes in or expects "eternal" growth. It is well
| known that any bubble fueled by cheap money, government
| bailouts, corporate welfare, or any other intervention will
| eventually burst. This is planned for by the very largest
| companies. Companies without the resources to plan for these
| market crashes simply do the best that they can.
|
| > They will try to lock us down in the hardware = deprecate
| older hardware and force you to move to never software with TLS
| 1.3
|
| I feel your pain here as an enthusiast for older hardware, but
| this is simply untrue. No one ever forced me to give up my
| ZX81, my XT, or my PPC lampshade iMac. I have them, I've kept
| them running, and they're fine. The XT and PPC can get online
| just fine either with a TLS bridge or with sites like 68k.news
| and frogfind.com. The constant upgrade cycle is optional.
| People are keep phones longer than ever. The cool-down in the
| PC market indicates that those enthusiasts who wanted to
| upgrade have done so. The heat up now is likely to be
| datacenters where the next wave of AMD Epyc offers a very
| massive energy to performance trade-off against Skylake SP. All
| of that said, eWaste is an issue and companies who make
| hardware that cannot be serviced and/or upgraded easily should
| probably pay a tax on it.
|
| > Since processors now have peaked
|
| There's plenty of room at the bottom. Seriously. I do not
| normally make appeals to authority because doing so is stupid,
| but we are talking about the most complicated machines humans
| have ever created. In this case, I would urge you to listen to
| the guy who has made these machines with extreme success: Jim
| Keller. He thinks we still have a long roadway of improvements
| before we are forced to change the industry in major ways
| (Gallium Arsenide or quantum or something).
|
| > Anything manufactured today will probably have hardware kill-
| switches or programmed obsolescence
|
| Already kind of illegal in some jurisdictions, and already a
| thing in others. Mixed bag there. However, also completely
| untrue as you used "anything". For example, in the automobile
| space you can sill get a Jeep with solid axels, a simple
| naturally aspirated V6, body on frame, and able to be serviced
| in pretty much any garage anywhere. The will to deal with
| tradeoffs of such a vehicle is the largest obstacle. Likewise,
| with computing, the willingness to deal with the tradeoffs is
| the problem. Do you want the best performance with most
| convenience? Then you likely want an M1/M2 MBP, and there you
| are not very serviceable. You could always get a Framework or
| build yourself a desktop. You can even run Linux, BSD, or Haiku
| if you want to make sure that your software will be serviceable
| by you.
|
| In any case, the limit is on you. You can choose the locked-
| down products, or you can choose open platforms. Most people
| choose a mixture based upon their needs and preferences. The
| preponderance of that selfsame majority then determines the
| overall direction of global markets. This isn't some shadowy
| cabal purposefully making a system that is unsustainable, this
| is the consequence of an aggregate of choices that put momentum
| behind certain things.
| bullen wrote:
| You mean like lightbulb companies for the last 100 years?
|
| How can two people missunderstand eternal growth... I said
| premise... that is what they promise... obviously it dosen't
| exist!!! Do I need to add /s or something?!
|
| Jim Keller has been wrong so far... he can't solve the memory
| bottleneck.
|
| You can choose a non-locked down product now maybe, in 12
| months not a chance in hell!
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Using MacOS buys you some more time. Linux is a dumpster fire
| (no its not the year of Linux nor will I try Linux Mint for the
| 1000th time). While its not open source, MacOS still acts like
| an OS from the Win 7 days...for now anyway. They will probably
| end up going down the road of Win 11 but I think its going to
| take many more years till they get there.
|
| They also offer excellent support. Their hardware gets like 10
| years of OS updates. An M2 Mac today will last well past the
| next two US presidential cycles.
| striking wrote:
| Fine, I'll bite. I downvoted you because TLS 1.3 isn't a
| conspiracy to make your old stuff break, and such an allegation
| is undeserving of a reply. You should be able to run an HTTP/S
| proxy supporting TLS 1.3 on any machine, issuing your own cert
| to machines that insist on unsupported HTTPS connection types,
| and route most of your traffic through it without issue.
|
| Raspberry Pis are out of stock because 1) companies that used
| them in production and got those production builds certified in
| some way get preference and 2) scalpers are taking the rest of
| the stock and doubling their money with it as it drops.
|
| Older Xeons (and similar hardware) aren't worth running unless
| you have access to really cheap electricity; upgrading your
| system is cheaper than paying for the electricity you'd be
| wasting otherwise, even if you're staying a gen or two behind
| by buying datacenter surplus from eBay et al.
|
| I understand your consternation, as some devices (e.g. cell
| phones) and some applications (e.g. SaaS apps) definitely
| appear to exhibit rent-seeking behavior. But that's no reason
| to declare literally everything a conspiracy, which just makes
| you appear to have some wires crossed.
| bullen wrote:
| TLS 1.3 is not more secure then TLS 1.2
|
| Now Mojang and Rockstar (on azure) have disabled TLS 1.2 on
| their servers on purpose to lockout Windows 7.
|
| Windows 10 offers NOTHING of value compared to Windows 7.
| striking wrote:
| You should give
| https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/ssl/why-use-tls-1.3/ a
| read. Put briefly, TLS 1.2 supports cyphersuites that make
| it less secure and requires more roundtripping. It's not a
| surprise to me that some folks don't support it.
|
| Furthermore, the makers of Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto
| don't owe you the ability to use outdated OSes if you're
| using a service they maintain. They probably didn't intend
| to break your workflow, and instead wanted to make their
| own stuff more secure.
|
| If you're not a W10 fan, you could always run Minecraft on
| Linux. I think GTA V works on there as well. Either way,
| there's an out.
| bullen wrote:
| I need to have Win for game dev. Nothing is an out in any
| way.
|
| HTTPS is not secure in any way.
| mrjin wrote:
| Not sure how well/bad is AMD doing right now. Have been using
| Intel machines for over two decades now but not long ago I
| finally switched to AMD with my new PC and I regret haven't done
| so earlier. In the meantime, I'm also about to ditch Windows. I
| guess I'm not alone. Time to say goodbye to Wintel league.
| Comevius wrote:
| That's more or less irrelevant, AMD is one of the many fabless
| companies like Qualcomm or MediaTek. Intel makes it's own
| chips, and now wants to make chips for other companies as well.
| They may end up making AMD processors one day.
| akuma73 wrote:
| Isn't that a huge conflict of interest?
|
| It's hard to see how AMD would get capacity ahead of Intel
| CPUs.
| simpsond wrote:
| Agree. They will prioritize their chips on leading edge.
| Plenty of business for older processes though.
| Comevius wrote:
| Samsung makes a lot of money manufacturing displays and
| cameras for Apple. They are working on an under-display
| sensor too that's going to replace the notch in the future.
|
| Intel used to make a processor with AMD graphics and 4GB
| HBM2 (Core i7-8809G).
| jarym wrote:
| > Toshiya Hari of Goldman Sachs, a bank,
|
| Never thought I'd see an Economist article explaining that GS are
| a bank hahaha
| lakomen wrote:
| Paywalled
| top_sigrid wrote:
| https://archive.ph/GpPCN
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| Thanks (O/T: _copy-pasting text into vim to even read TFA_ high
| times to flag ad-ridden, basically unreadable content, or not
| link to it in the first place)
| agomez314 wrote:
| I'm able to read it just fine in Brave Browser
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| Adding https://remove-js.com/ before the URL i.e.
| https://remove-
| js.com/https://www.economist.com/business/202... is often an
| easy fix for news websites. The page actually looks beautiful
| with this, and the content is front and center.
| tanseydavid wrote:
| >> or not link to it in the first place
|
| Please, do not suggest this.
|
| You can decide for yourself whether or not you want to go to
| the extra effort to read the content. And then the rest of us
| can also decide for ourselves.
| aliqot wrote:
| Yes, please more of this thinking. With all of the choice
| we have now, personal agency is not valued at a time when
| it needs reinforcing the most. Take care, stranger.
| m_mueller wrote:
| O/T T: try reader mode in firefox or safari sometime. works
| pretty well.
| habibur wrote:
| Wondering if that means Raspberry Pi will be available again.
|
| Still no sign of stability in supply.
| karmicthreat wrote:
| You can probably just ignore them as a concern at this point.
| Nobody is going to want to use them in new products. They might
| keep going as a educational novelty but the magic is gone as
| far as using them in commercial/industrial products.
| alexk307 wrote:
| What makes you say that? Plenty of commercial operations
| would use them if they could purchase them at scale
| moffkalast wrote:
| https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/production-and-supply-chain...
|
| That's from April, but in short there's a huge order backlog
| that they're still working through apparently, despite
| producing half a million units per month. With the lockdown gap
| in production and the Pi 4s getting increasingly integrated
| into various 3rd party products I suppose that's no surprise.
|
| It's quite apparent that there's little demand for the Pico,
| since it's always in stock.
| swores wrote:
| > _It 's quite apparent that there's little demand for the
| Pico, since it's always in stock._
|
| Without additional context (which perhaps you have and used
| subconsciously) that's not evidence that there's less demand
| - just evidence that the ratio of demand to stock is lowest.
| It could be that it has 2x the demand but they prioritised it
| and produced 3x as much stock, or it could be that a specific
| component makes one product easier/less delayed than the
| other to make (in which case equal demand could still lead to
| only one being regularly in stock).
|
| If for example 100 people a year want to buy a product $A,
| and 10 a year want to buy product $B, and the company
| manufactures 200 $A's a year but only 5 $B's, then $B will be
| out of stock more despite being far less popular.
|
| Or course this partly relates to how well a company predicts
| future demand when deciding how much of each product to
| create. But in many cases (though I would guess not when it
| comes to The Raspberry Pi Foundation) marketing therefore
| also becomes a factor - in that companies may see value in
| either creating slightly less than they expect there to be
| demand for, or artificially limiting / lying about stock
| levels, in order to get people thinking "wow it's out of
| stock so it must be popular!"
| moffkalast wrote:
| Well it's either an overestimation in production or an
| underestimation in demand. Or likely both to some extent in
| this case.
|
| I bought a few of them a while back and have only recently
| managed to integrate one of them into a really basic
| project. They tried to make some kind of middle ground
| between an ESP and an Arduino, while providing an
| incredibly buggy MicroPython build and no Arudino IDE
| integration. Some of that's been corrected, but it still
| remains this all rounder thing that's never the best choice
| for the application.
| swores wrote:
| > _Well it 's either an overestimation in production or
| an underestimation in demand._
|
| Or they correctly estimated, planned not to go out of
| stock and were able to succeed. Jumping from "it never
| shows as out of stock" to "therefore they must have badly
| estimated one or both of supply or demand" is even
| stranger a leap of thinking than the initial
| misconception of thinking that not going out of stock
| proves low demand.
|
| In both this comment and the previous one, you're
| guessing at a possible explanation while writing as if
| you know it to be the correct explanation.
|
| (Sorry for coming across all critical, hopefully learning
| what can and can't be construed from a product being in
| stock is worth my negativity!)
| Aperocky wrote:
| Half a million units per month? That is IT?
|
| No wonder there's no supply.
| mordae wrote:
| People are just not yet used to it. Eventually it will gain
| more popularity. PIOs are awesome.
| [deleted]
| forinti wrote:
| The target audience for picos is a lot smaller, no?
| vaxman wrote:
| Eben says to embrace the Pico and buy the rPi400 because it
| does not compete with orders from industrial customers (that
| spent bazillions on testing/certification of their
| rPi4/rPi3-derived products and therefore receive some priority
| above the poor huddled masses yearning to breath free air). If
| you aren't down with Pico yet, I recommend googling Limor Fried
| and searching her company's site.
|
| As far as Intel goes, they've been on oxygen for decades with
| the technological advancements they appropriated from DEC,
| while at the same time selling off the DEC-designed StrongARM
| technology and exploring new ways to generate heat and waste
| power. At this point, they have a formal relationship with TSMC
| and a government mandate to turn the Rust Belt into the Silicon
| Belt, so don't count them out (unless you are 75 or something,
| because it will be 10-15 years for all of that to happen), but
| to guys like me (and I would imagine most people on a site like
| this), they're about as relevant now as IBM (/s) In the
| meantime, we need to convince Apple to sell its consumer
| chipsets, maybe with an incentive from USA (either money or an
| agreement not to prosecute them for investing so much training
| and capital in China that they feel comfortable announcing
| their plan on TV yesterday to murder as many people as
| necessary to return Taiwan to 1895 legal structure).
| IshKebab wrote:
| The Pico is a completely different product.
| NavinF wrote:
| Lay off the shrooms for a bit.
| svnt wrote:
| Explain where you think he is wrong.
| varelse wrote:
| [deleted]
| swamp40 wrote:
| > American chip bosses now fear that China could retaliate
|
| They will certainly retaliate. The question is how. Most think
| they will react similarly, banning cutting edge electronics
| exports that could have military use.
|
| But I suspect they will go after our weak spots. Prescription
| drugs, solar, lithium. I'm sure there are more.
| simonsarris wrote:
| yeah. They might even flood the country with fentanyl.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Highly recommend the economist's podcast on Xi called 'The
| Prince'
|
| Xi became a Leninist and is trying to be the next Mao. He is a
| true believer that his glory and the glory of China can only
| happen by taking back Taiwan.
|
| TSMC is a huge reason for this conflict. The current US policy is
| trying to slow China's technological might for that next war.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| It's also setting up the conditions for the US and the West to
| leave Taiwan to fight it's own fight like Ukraine.
| gtirloni wrote:
| Ukraine is fighting its own fight but it's far from alone.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Voters in a democracy tend to react better to dollars-spent
| than bodybags-returned.
|
| So support via the former will always be the more tenable
| position for a democracy.
| nly wrote:
| The best way for the EU to 'fight' russia would be to not
| be dependent on it for energy.
|
| Russia can also do what it likes because of the constant
| nuclear threat. Russia has nukes that work, whereas the
| likes of the UK has a single nuclear sub that
| occasionally gets stuck on a sand banks. The Russians
| probably know where it is at all times.
| brnt wrote:
| Fortunately there are other nuclear powers in the EU.
|
| It was one EU country in particular that was very
| vulnerable for a few separate reasons for the Russian gas
| politics, but they have seen the errors of their ways at
| long last.
|
| Dependence on Russian energy is significantly reduced and
| there more than every intention to reduce this to zero.
| Note that the intention was always there, gas was only
| ever a stopgap between now and fully renewable.
| warinukraine wrote:
| > Russia has nukes that work
|
| Does it?
|
| Nominally, Russia has roughly the same number of nukes as
| the US.
|
| The US military budget is 700bn/yr and it spends 60bn/yr
| in maintaining its nuclear weapons. So 60bn/yr is a good
| estimate for what it costs to maintain a US/Russia-sized
| nuclear weapons arsenal.
|
| Russia spends 60bn/yr on its military in _total_. However
| much of that goes into maintaining its nuclear arsenal is
| clearly not nearly enough. By all accounts Russia can't
| even maintain its trucks. Most likely the budget for
| nuclear maintenance is "disappearing" the same way that
| much state money disappears in Russia. Surely no on
| believes that Russia has been spending 60bn/yr since the
| 70s, when the last nuke was detonated.
|
| Russia no longer has nuclear weapons, you heard it here
| first.
| flerchin wrote:
| You make a good point, the Russkies should schedule a
| test. If that violates a treaty, well that never seemed
| to bother them before.
| WitCanStain wrote:
| It doesn't take very many to ruin a nation, and no one
| will be comforted by the fact that you were wrong when
| the plumes comes down from the sky.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Even if they have only one working nuke, in the right
| spot it would still be hundreds of thousands or millions
| dead/injured and a crippled nation for at least a few
| years.
| cpursley wrote:
| Yup. It's actually the same answer how we should have
| fought middle eastern terrorism after 911. The answer was
| for the west to become energy independent from the middle
| east as fast and sustainability as possible.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Voters in democracy tend to react better when debt or
| "others" are seen to be paying for things and not them...
|
| I can assure you that if the everyday American saw in
| line item on their paycheck called "Ukraine War Tax" the
| public would be much less supportive, but since all the
| money is either printed, to debt then there is a
| disconnect between government spending, and the hidden
| tax of inflation everyone is paying but pretending to
| just be "greedy companies" and not government spending
| that is the cause
| mywittyname wrote:
| Don't worry. Politicians will be sending out mailers and
| running ads that put that "Ukraine War Tax" front and
| center into peoples' minds. Support for Ukraine is
| substantially higher on the left and is falling on the
| right as people begin blaming the war for rising fuel
| prices in the USA.
|
| Republicans want the Presidency in 2024, and turning
| their base against Ukraine is going to be a pillar of
| their strategy.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| People should be blaming decades of both Republican and
| Democrat spending policies, and a fed focused more on
| political goals than on solid classic economics which
| resulted in a over heated stock, and housing market that
| was never allowed to properly cool even after the market
| signaled several times there are systemic issues...
| Instead both the government and the fed just poured on
| the gas instead of putting water on the fire.
|
| The War is just the needle that is contributing to the
| massive bubble popping
| gonzo41 wrote:
| Yes, but I think America will walk back it's current
| hawkish defense posture around going head to head with
| china over Taiwan over the next 10 years. If they get into
| a fight, I expect the US to supply arms and money but not
| soldiers or marines.
|
| This posture change will keep pace broadly with the
| American domestic chip fab industry.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| >> If they get into a fight, I expect the US to supply
| arms and money but not soldiers or marines.
|
| This is very obviously true, since China is a nuclear
| power and has ICBMs as well. We won't be involved in a
| hot war with them for the same reason we have been
| avoiding that with Russia.
| windexh8er wrote:
| But China doesn't actually have a lot of technological prowess
| on their own. The USG might be trying to slow them down but
| they're not concerned about China militarily.
|
| I worked for a defense contractor back in the early 2000s when
| the USG was selling a lot of arms and systems to Taiwan. I got
| to see the bullying in person via the ASOC (part of the C4ISR
| platform) system we were installing. China would routinely fly
| fighters over the straight to the boundary and fly the line and
| return to the mainland. I didn't understand the rationale at
| the time but the US was enabling Taiwan for their own interests
| in chips. China doesn't matter as much but Taiwan does. The US
| always had a large naval presence in Taiwan that I saw. China
| has a relatively weak naval force in comparison - but obviously
| enough forces to easily take over Taiwan if and when they
| really feel the need to. I think these programs just bought the
| US more time.
|
| Ultimately though, China needs Taiwan for those chips. The
| problem being that if the major producers leave Taiwan then
| China is hopeless as they don't possess the capabilities or
| people to retool. They need the likes of Germany and others to
| even think about the ability to produce competitive processors
| to AMD / Intel. China can't build its own fab for these types
| of procs.
|
| Finally, I didn't realize until more recently that China was,
| and still is, relatively incapable on their own. Some recent
| books put it into perspective for me on a global scale. But the
| fact that China just recently figured out how to manufacture a
| high precision pen is an interesting reference [0].
|
| [0]
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/01/18...
| DeathArrow wrote:
| >China can't build its own fab for these types of procs.
|
| China can't build fabs for very small lithography processes
| yet. But 40 years ago they couldn't build almost anything.
| That changed. The fab situation will change, too.
| windexh8er wrote:
| That's entirely true. They're also decades behind at this
| point. Chip design and fabrication is an iterative process
| - if you don't have access to high precision manufacturing
| capable of building the machines that fabricate the chips
| you can't fab. China can't build those machines today.
|
| Again, it's simple to say on a whim that China can go from
| building a lot of cheap electronics to building very
| complex microprocessors. But that doesn't change the
| hurdles or the reality.
|
| Also keep in mind that if anything gets in the way of
| developing these processes - more supply chain breakdown,
| access to raw materials required to fabricate processors is
| unavailable or constrained, or China is dealing with any
| other number of issues along that path it will only take
| longer. Then realize that during this period of time the
| rest of the processes are enhanced and iterated leaving
| China even further behind.
|
| So at the time China can fabricate chips that are outdated
| _today_ , the world will be 20+ years down the road from
| where we are right now. The more you dig into all of the
| things that are needed for China to catch up the more it's
| apparent that it very well may not happen.
| Dah00n wrote:
| >The USG might be trying to slow them down but they're not
| concerned about China militarily.
|
| The one thing that matters in the long run is money and even
| though the US is fighting tooth and nail to halt China it
| isn't very likely to happen - who knows, we'll see. Whenever
| this discussion pops up it reeks of racism. People from China
| aren't less intelligent than people in Germany or in the US
| so with time and more money they will with 100% certainty
| overcome any technological gap. Sure they are behind in some
| areas but pretending they can't make a pen is disingenuous.
| They have had the capability to launch satellites since the
| 1970's and are now building a space-station. It is no
| different than saying the US can't make rockets because they
| had a lot of outside (Nazi) help after WW2. China has in a
| very short time-span gone from mostly agriculture to being in
| the top three in many (most?) high tech areas.
|
| But in short can you explain why the US is using insane
| amounts of energy to slow down China if they are so totally
| incapable? Why do we need a completely new doctrine and pivot
| of the navy to be sailing around an utterly incapable and un-
| concerning China?
| Zoadian wrote:
| it's not racism. sure chinese could develope all these
| things on their own. but you need to realize, they'd have
| to produces the machines that produces the machines that
| produce the machines... first. all this 'high tech' stuff
| is _really_ hrd to make. it would take a ton of money
| invested to even get to current tech levels. and tech
| advances pretty fast.
| windexh8er wrote:
| > Whenever this discussion pops up it reeks of racism.
| People from China aren't less intelligent than people in
| Germany or in the US so with time and more money they will
| with 100% certainty overcome any technological gap. Sure
| they are behind in some areas but pretending they can't
| make a pen is disingenuous.
|
| It's not disingenous and it's not racist as I've laid it
| out. Facts are facts. I've never discounted the fact that
| China can't make electronics or that it can't, as a nation
| state, build satellites. What it's manufacturing sector,
| the bulk of China's financial success couldn't do was make
| a ball point pen as it requires precision manufacturing.
| That was not in China's wheelhouse until 2017. There are
| countries that excel in precision manufacturing _at scale_.
| You 're conflating some very macro things.
|
| > China has in a very short time-span gone from mostly
| agriculture to being in the top three in many (most?) high
| tech areas.
|
| Define "high tech". The top 5 chip manufacturers in the
| world are: AMD (US), Intel (US), Broadcom (US), TSMC (CN
| --> Taiwan), NVidia (US). I'm curious if that helps you
| understand, better, what I'm talking about. I'm not talking
| about run of the mill electronics manufacturers. If you
| round out the top 12 - China isn't there: STM, NXP, Micron,
| LRC, Applied Materials, Texas Instruments, and Qualcomm -
| none of which are Chinese corporations. These are the
| companies that know how to build chips. Where is China in
| this mix? Because these are the companies you need to build
| high-tech things. Putting an iPhone together is not the
| same thing as building the chips in them.
|
| > But in short can you explain why the US is using insane
| amounts of energy to slow down China if they are so totally
| incapable? Why do we need a completely new doctrine and
| pivot of the navy to be sailing around an utterly incapable
| and un-concerning China?
|
| Yes. TSMC. They are the dominant, mass volume, manufacturer
| of these chips today. The US supply chain relies on this
| right now. Chip building isn't like retail where you can
| throw up a store in a few weeks and are off to the races.
| Building what TSMC has takes time. The US is buying time.
| That's why you slow China down and keep the issue of Taiwan
| at bay.
| mehlmao wrote:
| AMD is Taiwan; they design chips but those are
| manufactured by TSMC. Intel is Israel.
| windexh8er wrote:
| AMD and Intel are both US based companies.
|
| Again - I'm talking about R&D, chip design, intellectual
| property - in chips the US holds the majority of the
| major players. Yes, TSMC is manufacturing many of those
| chips today, but design and manufacturing are not the
| same thing.
|
| It's appreciated when you read the entirety of the post
| before sharing information that's already been reviewed
| and incorrect information.
| lossolo wrote:
| Things changed. Most war games/simulations around Taiwan that
| I'm aware of were lost by US or stalemated.
|
| "US Could Lose 1000 Fighter Jets, Its Entire Global Fleet If
| It Goes To War Against China Over Taiwan"[1]
|
| 1. https://eurasiantimes.com/us-could-lose-over-900-fighter-
| jet...
| dQw4w9WgXcQ wrote:
| Fundamentally the access to resources would make defending
| Taiwan exceptionally challenging. The real answer to the
| war though is disconnect our supply chain dependencies from
| China and let them sink into economic chaos, and that is
| easily winnable and already in work.
| kingkawn wrote:
| Chinese tech and power has come along way since your
| formative image of them took shape in the early 2000s
| windexh8er wrote:
| How? China doesn't possess the capability to build their
| own competitive chips. The chips they do manufacture do not
| require high precision. Everything I've read about China
| over the last few years has indicated it is, generally,
| unsustainable. From their disastrous fiscal policies of
| internal hyper-finance [0], their weakening navy [1], their
| aging population that's well on its way through decline [2]
| and the [3] continued climate issues that loom over China -
| it doesn't look all that great once you peel back the
| facade. China is in a big mess that started back then and
| continues to get worse under current leadership.
|
| [0]https://www.csis.org/analysis/chinas-slow-motion-
| financial-c... [1]
| https://news.usni.org/2021/01/22/chinese-navy-faces-
| overseas... [2] https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-
| economy/article/3157385/c... [3] https://www.world-
| energy.org/article/20509.html
| mywittyname wrote:
| China has recently developed a low-altitude, hyper-sonic
| missile platform (DF-ZF) for which the USA doesn't have a
| great defense against. And this platform is specifically
| designed to attack carrier groups.
|
| THAAD can theoretically stop these missiles but the range
| for doing so is extremely limited due to the speed (up to
| Mach 10) and low altitude these missiles fly at.
| Dah00n wrote:
| >China doesn't possess the capability to build their own
| competitive chips
|
| The US doesn't either. ASML is the only supplier of
| cutting-edge lithography systems and they are Dutch, not
| from Taiwan or the US. Without them Intel and TSMC
| couldn't do what they do and US sanctions is why China
| can't currently build competitive chips. It is not
| because of some kind of US tech brilliance.
| windexh8er wrote:
| Look at the top 12 chip manufacturers globally. The ones
| that design the chips that run our everyday lives. They
| are mostly US based companies. The IP is within, mostly,
| US based companies. I posted this in another comment.
| This is why the US is heavily subsidizing bringing that
| to US soil [0]. This is preemptive, but in many ways, a
| bit late.
|
| If you're saying the US doesn't know how to design and
| build chips then you're conflating two very different
| things. The US manufacturers used to build them here, but
| the global supply chain made it infeasible to do it on US
| soil historically. The US currently doesn't have the
| manufacturing capacity to fabricate the chips they design
| - but the actual R&D is here. China doesn't have that.
|
| > It is not because of some kind of US tech brilliance.
|
| If that's the case then please share one Chinese rival to
| Intel / AMD.
|
| [0] https://www.nist.gov/semiconductors/chips-act
| petra wrote:
| I believe TSMC is 50% owned by US companies.
| selectodude wrote:
| Intel owns a significant chunk of ASML but it's always
| been a fully Dutch company.
|
| That being said, ASML is 100 percent reliant on US
| Government research for their EUV breakthroughs, which is
| why the USG can tell them who they can and can't sell to.
| greedo wrote:
| The US has no naval presence in Taiwan. USN ships might do
| port visits, but they have no basing rights. They will
| periodically transit the Straits on Freedom of Navigation
| (FON) exercises. The closest USN base is in Yokohama Japan.
| windexh8er wrote:
| I don't know if they had any basing rights at the time I
| was there, but given the USG was delivering weapons
| (military ships, etc) there was a large presence there at
| that point in time. I only know that through actual
| observations while on bases there.
| computerfriend wrote:
| I also highly recommend _The Prince_.
|
| But I don't buy this argument. TSMC is a factor, sure. In that
| it likely increases the cost of war. The PRC shouldn't expect
| that by invading, they'll win TSMC (the company, the tech, the
| talent, the market share).
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| I've heard that all the TSMC plants are rigged up to be able
| to blow at the push of a button for the exact scenario of a
| red invasion.
| roenxi wrote:
| There is a more simple explanation - if China wants a boat to
| travel from anywhere to Guangzhou, Tianjin or Shanghai then at
| the moment the boat has to pass close by an island that is a US
| ally. If China controlled Taiwan, that would no longer be true
| and they'd have easy access to the Pacific.
|
| For the last 300? 400? years the dominant global superpower has
| been a naval power. You don't need to be a Leninist or a "true
| believer" to see China's future glory being helped by
| controlling Taiwan.
| computerfriend wrote:
| China already has easy access outside of the territorial
| waters of its neighbours. Taiwan's territorial waters don't
| really prevent it from operating. Less so than Japan, Vietnam
| and Philipines.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > There is a more simple explanation - if China wants a boat
| to travel from anywhere to Guangzhou, Tianjin or Shanghai
| then at the moment the boat has to pass close by an island
| that is a US ally. If China controlled Taiwan, that would no
| longer be true and they'd have easy access to the Pacific.
|
| No, it would still be true. Just beyond Taiwan on the north
| side are the furthest islands in the Japanese island chain,
| and if you instead head south, you see Philippine islands
| instead. Head through the South China Sea and you end up
| either having to run past Singapore through the Straits of
| Malacca (already a critical, congested chokepoint), or travel
| through the internal waters of Indonesia or the Philippines
| (admittedly, I'm not sure you could call Singapore, Malaysia,
| or Indonesia US allies, given the general ASEAN propensity
| for neutrality).
| saiya-jin wrote:
| They may be neutral, but China doesn't care much. I've
| personally seen in cca 2014 in Philippine's Palawan islands
| (near El Nido, great diving place btw) big modern military
| ship plus few smaller that were there stationed semi-
| permanently. When I checked online back then there were
| already some provocations from Chinese side happening so
| this was the response.
| rswail wrote:
| Singapore is aligned with the West, trains with/by
| Australia who are aligned with the US and NZ.
| kridsdale2 wrote:
| This is true, but they fell VERY quickly when the
| Japanese showed up. Maybe they'll do it again.
| abi wrote:
| You do realize the Singapore of today is very different
| from the Singapore of the 40s (which was still a British
| colony)?
| Ialdaboth wrote:
| I don't even really understand what "glory" is supposed to
| mean here; I'm more a believer in the cold, hard reality of
| geopolitical survival : you can't be a global superpower when
| your own seafront is literally at the mercy of an hostile
| (and warlike) nation.
| kavalg wrote:
| But I've always wondered if they need the tech or the land
| more. If it is the tech only, why not resort to industrial
| espionage or just kidnapping the key engineers from TSMC? Where
| does the core value of TSMC line on? It is the know-how, some
| specific machinery that is hard to replicate even if you have
| the blueprints or something else?
| greedo wrote:
| The PRC doesn't "need" Taiwan, either in a geographic sense
| or in an industrial capacity. This is purely a regime
| legitimacy test; the presence of non-communist Chinese right
| off the coast is a rebuke of the PRC. It's a bit similar to
| how Cuba is viewed in some parts of the US.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| > If it is the tech only, why not resort to industrial
| espionage or just kidnapping the key engineers from TSMC
|
| They know how to fab chips, they don't have the tech.
|
| It would be far more useful to kidnap Dutch technicians and
| scientists from ASML. But that wouldn't be enough as ASML is
| also dependent on some key chemicals and tools manufactured
| in other countries.
| machinekob wrote:
| tl:dr Global recession => lower chip demand for consumers
|
| China ban => lower demand from CCP
|
| nvidia RTX 4090 still out of stock in most places :|
|
| I'm pretty sure datacenter and military chip usage will grow in
| next few years even if recession hit consumer market even harder
| then past year then US chipmakers will get fat checks just 2be
| prepared for China retaliation (probably feels good to be Intel
| in chip war time).
| hulitu wrote:
| > tl:dr Global recession => lower chip demand for consumers
|
| Global recession is to blame for everything. I'm waiting for
| some years for payable video card, nothing special, but i guess
| Global recession is to blame. /s
| NavinF wrote:
| You're waiting for a "payable video card" after prices
| crashed to an all time low? There are 3090s getting dumped
| for <$800 now. Is a 50% drop not enough for you?
| ChoGGi wrote:
| Nope :)
| ThatMedicIsASpy wrote:
| That's a 3090 with terrible power draw. Not a decent
| 200-300EUR card
| machinekob wrote:
| Global recession for sure can be blamed for most thinks in EU
| right now, as we just have a lot less money to spend cause of
| energy prices, inflation and enormous number of refuges which
| make prices of basic goods even higher (In some places from 3
| to even 10% [Poland] of all population living there are
| people from Ukraine). And Central Europe isn't prepare for
| that.
| justanorherhack wrote:
| Most of which is the result of policy.
| Nursie wrote:
| You can still get a 4090 in Western Australia! They've marked
| remaining stock up a bit, but there was no first-day sellout
| here.
|
| I think demand is considerably lower for these than it was two
| years ago, but nvidia is managing supply to some extent.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>nvidia RTX 4090 still out of stock in most places :|
|
| I mean, I just don't think they made that many in the first
| place. Overclockers UK(one of the biggest online electronics
| stores in the UK) was very upfront with how many units they are
| getting from manufacturers, and they got like ~500 cards total
| for launch. That's nothing. So of course it's out of stock,
| even if only a very limited group of enthusiasts is actually
| interested in buying one.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| 500?! I have to wonder why nVidia even bothered launching the
| cards.
| bsenftner wrote:
| With the Skyscraper tall wall of _facts_ that article is
| composed, one would think such writing would have an index of
| references. But nope, what The Economists publishes sounds
| factual but is barely a nudge above laundry room gossip with a
| complete lack of references, lack of accountability for that wall
| of _facts_. It is truly amazing how manipulated our official
| discourse is on these critical issues. How to know what is
| opinion?
| gsatic wrote:
| Just follow what the stock is doing. Everything else is
| bullshit.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| Why do you say that? Almost every paragraph contains numerous
| references to either industry reports, sales numbers and market
| shares, various company projections past and present, relevant
| global events, laws passed or government statements, market
| performance and whatnot.
|
| They aren't enumerated and listed at the end sure, but they're
| there.
| xattt wrote:
| > Why do you say that?
|
| I assume there are certain activities that can be churned and
| claimed for social credit score, which may include
| denigrating Western publications in comment sections of
| various sites.
|
| I mean I would be doing this if it improved my social
| standing.
| striking wrote:
| Having spoken to someone who simply felt a nationalistic
| fervor in their formative years, I can tell you some folks
| just do it for fun.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing,
| shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like
| bsenftner wrote:
| Try tracking them down, many are just dead ends, many are
| opinion presented as facts.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| I assume that in order to make this claim you have indeed
| tracked them down and could then share your results in
| order to corroborate this?
| senttoschool wrote:
| A few months ago, I posted that here that governments around the
| world should not interfere with the chip industry just because of
| the covid-induced shortages. The reason is that supply and demand
| will naturally sort things out and that any government handout to
| chip companies to increase capacity will be wasted because chip
| demand will swing the other way.
|
| The chip industry is now swinging the other way.
| Balero wrote:
| I think it is fair for a government to promote such a key
| industry to diversify where it is based. Currently a crazy
| percentage of chips are made in one geographical location. A
| huge amount of the modern economy is reliant on having cheap
| and easy access to these chips. This isn't a supply/demand
| decision by governments, but a strategic risk decision. Having
| some domestic/local regional (think EU based) chip
| manufacturing is going to be like having steel or food
| production. A strategic decision.
| jtorsella wrote:
| I really don't understand this. Chips are tangible goods, not
| services where, for example, a bunch of hospitality capacity
| went to waste during the pandemic. Any "extra" chips will go to
| use, and will only serve to reduce costs for firms and
| consumers purchasing them, expand the range of products it
| makes sense to put chips in and the speed and quality of chips
| companies can afford to build on. While market signals are the
| best way to determine these things in general, many of the
| reasons mentioned in the article - long spin-up times for
| production infrastructure, dependence on other countries with
| fraught geopolitical situations - are strong reasons to build
| reserve capacity, even setting aside the direct economic
| benefits.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Chips are tangible goods
|
| Many chips are not _fungible_ , at least not for large-volume
| orders that incorporate stuff like customer specific mask
| ROMs or optimizations, and certainly for built-to-order stuff
| like Apple's SoCs. That means that let's say Apple can't just
| go and take a bunch of NVIDIA's chips and slap them into
| their products, and I'd even take a bet and say that
| manufacturers of NVIDIA cards can't easily take up cancelled
| order capacity for the same NVIDIA chip from other
| manufacturers.
| jtorsella wrote:
| Yes, that's a good point. But it seems to me like that's a
| matter of degree, right? Like, even stipulating that the
| chips themselves are not fungible across products and
| companies, they are fungible across time for the same or
| similar products. The price of your 2023 fridge, for
| example, could be lower because of excess supply of chips
| for 2022 models, no? And am I right in thinking that even
| if the chips themselves are not fungible (and there is a
| genuine possibility that excess production of specific
| chips goes completely to waste), excess productive capacity
| is good in and of itself despite some amount of
| specialization?
| svnt wrote:
| No. Chips don't really expire, and suppliers often have
| to wean their customers off them by raising the prices
| regularly once they're done acquiring design wins.
|
| If the chips went on sale every year then companies would
| gamble on additional stock at discount, driving revenue
| down, and further disrupting the sales transitions into
| new IC designs.
| pzduniak wrote:
| As far as I understand, the primary reason for these
| investments is not to address the shortages, but to decouple
| Western nations from their reliance on Taiwanese silicon. Most
| of the remaining shortages - which are still happening in many
| industries, eg. heat pump shortages in Europe are mostly
| blocked by chip supply - are caused by the production backlog
| of the older/cheaper/different technologies.
|
| So the goal is political. The economy can take a hit to achieve
| it.
| tooltalk wrote:
| Well, the foundry business is now a two-horse race between
| Samsung and TSMC. Intel, many believe won't make it. The US
| gov't knows it too -- that's why Trump arm-twisted TSMC to
| open new plants in Arizona.
|
| Samsung was making Apple's A's in Austin, Texas some time
| ago, but Apple ditched Samsung's US manufacturing in favor of
| their China/Taiwan-first offshore outsourcing strategy.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Samsung was making Apple's A's in Austin, Texas some time
| ago, but Apple ditched Samsung's US manufacturing in favor
| of their China/Taiwan-first offshore outsourcing strategy.
|
| Apple runs an _Asia-first_ strategy these days, they are
| divesting from China at top speed (whether that 's due to
| sanction threats, the risk of operating in dictatorships,
| raising wages in China or a combination of that is up for
| debate). It doesn't make much sense for Apple economically
| and logistically to use US-made products as they have to be
| shipped across the ocean to the assembly plants.
| tooltalk wrote:
| >> ... they are divesting from China at top speed...
|
| I'm not entirely convinced that that's what Apple is
| doing.
|
| The Information reported[1] last year that Apple made
| ginormouse investments ($270+B) in China's domestic tech
| industry to train their workforce and foster China's tech
| manufacturing. That was 6-7 years ago. It was also
| revealed very recently that Apple was still trying mighty
| hard to source more materials and chip suppliers from
| China's domestic tech industry (eg, YMTC) in spite of the
| on-going US sanctions on MIC chips -- in this particular
| case with YMTC, Apple finally gave up only after the
| Biden admin expanded export control on YMTC last week[2].
|
| I don't think Apple is deterred by Xi's dictatorship,
| China's geopolitical threats to Taiwan/the South Sea
| conflict with other SEA countries, or the Uigher (and
| other ethnic minoority groups) human rights concerns,
| despite their virtue signaling here in the US. Sure, I
| think the justification for Biden's foreign/trade
| policies is up for debates, but what is quite clear is
| that Apple hasn't really changed its China/Taiwan-first
| business practices.
|
| 1. https://www.theinformation.com/articles/facing-
| hostile-chine...
|
| 2. https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Tech/Semiconductors/A
| pple-f...
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Apple should be investing in a North America first
| strategy and getting manufacturer for everything spun up
| here
| Proven wrote:
| guidedlight wrote:
| I saw this announcement being more guaranteeing US onshore chip
| fabs are being built as demand increase.
|
| The rise of TSMC has somewhat increased the national security
| risk as the market share has shifted away from Intel. We are
| seeing with the Ukraine War, a reliable domestic supply of
| semiconductors is now critical to national security.
|
| I expect Intel will continue to be helped along by the US
| government for some time.
| bfung wrote:
| There's gov intervention now, not due to shortage nor Covid
| related supply, but strategic moves that's happening between US
| and China.
|
| With China having "seized" Hong Kong, and Russia invading
| Ukraine, flags went up signaling that the next major move in
| the future could be China invading Taiwan. And Taiwan is where
| the most advanced chips are made.
|
| In parallel news, playing with the open source AI models, it's
| clear that GPUs are NEEDED in order to run these AI models. Ex:
| an Nvidia RTX3090 (low end of A100) can run Stable Diffusion in
| a couple minutes, while my 2013 MacBook Pro, cpu driven, takes
| ~4hrs to perform the same task.
|
| AI models applied to military uses is a game changer, as
| demonstrated by Ukraine equipped with US tech.
|
| Mitigating the risk of losing Taiwan, enabling production on US
| shore, and banning sales to China [1] would keep the economic
| and military advantage on the US side a bit longer than if
| things kept going the way they were.
|
| Chips might slump now, but GPUs are gonna be in hot demand,
| even w/o the blockchain use cases. As demonstrated by the open
| source AI models, we're about to replace a lot of stock photos,
| news illustrations, logo services... and that's just the
| beginning.
|
| [1] https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/documents/about-
| bis/newsro...
| hikingsimulator wrote:
| You mention AI applications in Ukraine. Can you provide more
| information on that? Sounds like a rabbit hole.
| chernofool wrote:
| Are you certain that AI is used in any of the tech that the
| US is sending to Ukraine?
|
| It's mostly cold war era equipment, designed around the '90s
| or earlier. Modern AI also seems very failure-prone for
| military applications around populated areas.
| rank0 wrote:
| What about the air defense systems? Those things surely
| need advanced compute.
|
| There's also drones, communications systems, electronic
| warfare systems, jets etc...
| chernofool wrote:
| None of those systems are autonomous, people still handle
| the decision-making. Also, AI does not mean faster or
| more advanced compute; the fact that it requires so many
| cycles and watts is a testament to its relative
| inefficiency.
|
| Aerospace code is much too thoroughly-vetted to use
| something as slow and imprecise as a modern AI system.
| Existing realtime platforms and sensors are plenty fast,
| and you can prove that they'll work correctly. Plus, when
| you're procuring chips to run in an adverse environment,
| advanced process nodes will probably be too fragile and
| prone to interference.
| gergoe wrote:
| Quindecillion wrote:
| cxr wrote:
| Please just downvote these comments (and then flag them if
| you can), rather than replying.
|
| If you aren't able to downvote or flag them, then please
| still abstain from responding. It will get killed
| eventually, but replying brings undue attention, thwarting
| the point of moderation.
| Dawnyhf5t wrote:
| noja wrote:
| I'm not sure that makes your prediction correct, you need to
| give a timeframe too. Without a timeframe, it's just waiting
| until you are right.
| yvdriess wrote:
| The current slump seems purely caused by a demand drop. It will
| take years to see the capacity increase because of those
| government investments. By then, we will hopefully be out of
| this recession.
| mFixman wrote:
| I know nothing about the chip-making process, and news about fabs
| and the chip industry confuse and scare me.
|
| Can anybody link me to a guide with the basics of these topics,
| like what exactly is a chip (is it a microcontroller? a part of a
| larger system?), or why the few giant fabs can't be replaced by a
| lot of smaller and cheaper ones?
| muricula wrote:
| There are two parts to making chips: architecture (design) and
| process (how it's manufactured). Intel does both but eg Apple
| only does design and outsources manufacturing to other
| companies.
|
| There are lots of different chips ranging from slow, energy
| efficient, and cheap microcontrollers, to fast, energy hungry,
| and expensive high performance computing clusters. Intel makes
| the fast ones, and had the fastest chips from the late 1990s to
| the mid 2010s. Since then, a Taiwanese company has had the
| fastest chips which go into iPhones, Nvidia graphics cards, and
| AMD cpus.
|
| Building a fab (manufacturing plant) to make the fastest chips
| which require features shorter than 7nm (billionths of a
| meter!) requires billions of dollars in up front investment.
| It's mass scale manufacturing at some of the lowest levels
| anything has ever been created at.
|
| The US gov't is afraid that company which makes the fastest
| chips in Taiwan (which is not recognized as an independent
| country, but is effectively self governing, but China claims is
| theirs, it's complicated yes), could be under Chinese control
| some day. The Military Industrial Complex don't want the US
| tech sector or US defense tech to be beholden to China, and US
| companies (Intel) want government funding to build expensive
| factories. Thus the CHIPS act.
| [deleted]
| Melatonic wrote:
| Seems like a dumb article - their whole argument is that we
| should NOT be building fabs in the US because demand has recently
| fallen and we MIGHT end up with too much supply?
|
| Seems like a good thing to be honest. More supply means cheaper
| prices and even if demand is a bit lower there is no way it is
| going to keep going down. We have CPU's in damn near everything
| these days. The drop is probably mainly because of crypto mining
| falling of a cliff.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Seems like a good thing as a consumer. As a producer it's what
| you try to avoid. They're not charities
| CydeWeys wrote:
| It's reasons like this why the DPA and other mechanisms
| exist. Having sufficient fab capacity in case global supply
| lines experience disruption is a strategic reserve of high
| national security importance.
| godelski wrote:
| Oh no, if only it were possible to expand the use case of cheap
| and affordable chips. It's not like we can put computer chips
| into devices like refrigerators, thermostats, watches, lights,
| tea kettles, ovens, cars, bicycles, musical instruments, desks,
| keyboards, doors, sorry, I lost track what we were talking
| about. Seems like we can put computers in literally everything.
| Isn't that what the IOT people promised us?
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| We've reached or are approaching "peak tech".
|
| The other day we were discussing Pablo Azar, "Computer Saturation
| and the Productivity Slowdown" (Federal Reserve Bank of New York
| Liberty Street Economics, October 6, 2022) [1]
|
| Simply reinventing systems and deliberately obsoleting stuff to
| create fake demand is over. The metaverse isn't hoing to happen.
| People are fatigued with tech.
|
| We're entering a different era in which we need to make better,
| more humane and effective technology, not just more and more and
| more of it.
|
| [1]
| https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2022/10/comput...
|
| EDIT: less trashy link
| zelias wrote:
| On the contrary, I think the next decade will call for a
| revolution in physical technologies as opposed to the web-
| centric mentality of the past few decades.
| dougmwne wrote:
| I truly do not think so.
|
| I have experienced a handful of magic products, Apple products
| which are the best example, that are built from incredibly
| capable software that takes cheap hardware components and makes
| them sing. All objects could be like this, deep software
| capabilities running on a few dollars of hardware. I have the
| idea that the demand for people that can create software is
| bottomless, that there will always be more thing to turn into
| perfect iThings.
| whoIsYou wrote:
| I think we may have reached peak consumer tech
|
| I think there is plenty of industry tech left to be developer
| vkou wrote:
| We may need this, but the stakeholders holding the purse
| strings don't. And they are the ones who will decide what gets
| built.
|
| It's how we end up with shit like grocery self-checkout
| machines and robots answering customer support calls. Nobody
| likes being yelled at by a robot who doesn't understand the
| situation, except the decision-makers buying the machines.
|
| This isn't peak tech, not by a longshot. This is just Intel's
| competitors eating it's lunch.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Grocery self-checkout machines are great. There's even a
| system now where you can bring a little scanner with you and
| scan as you pick them out, that way you can bag them directly
| in your cart, saving the time of the final scan and the
| bagging (it was great during the peak of the pandemic, skip
| the cashier and waiting in the high-population line area).
|
| Robots answering support calls are annoying, but self-service
| websites are pretty good for 99% of things.
| pcai wrote:
| the scan as you shop technology is actually being phased
| out in many chains because the theft rates are
| unsustainable
|
| some wholesale clubs apparently counter this by randomly
| auditing every cart as you leave, but that seems to leave
| the whole thing only marginally more efficient than
| traditional checkout
| bee_rider wrote:
| Well, whichever places hang on to them will always at
| least have this one customer.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Yes, apathetic, emasculated, underpaid employees are
| being used to examine your cart/checkout.
|
| I have lost count of how many items I forgot to pay for
| at Home Depot.
| vkou wrote:
| No, they aren't. There's not a single point in time when I
| have ever scanned my own groceries faster than the guy who
| does it 8 hours a day.
|
| They scream at me when they think I'm stealing (Any human
| being doing that would instantly be reprimanded by a
| manager), they have tiny platforms where I can't even fit
| my groceries and heaven forbid if I do something the
| machine doesn't like, an attendant needs to come unfuck it
| for me.
|
| The best thing about them is that I can do some work for
| the store for free as part of my shopping. I can't wait for
| the next grocery innovation of having the customers stock
| the shelves from the backroom before they can fill a sack
| with onions.
| MikePlacid wrote:
| > I can't wait for the next grocery innovation of having
| the customers stock the shelves from the backroom before
| they can fill a sack with onions.
|
| Think bolder. As a software engineer in the Soviet Union
| I had to spend about three weeks each year in the
| collective farm fields planting, tending and harvesting
| potatoes and cabbages. Since some of my American friends
| are very fond of socialism these days - these types of
| "improvement" look definitely a possibility.
| vkou wrote:
| You were a professional software engineer in the Soviet
| Union while still being a high school student? Or do you
| mean to say that you were one in the 1940s, when people
| were packed into train cars to bring in the harvest,
| among other things?
|
| Something about this doesn't seem to entirely add up,
| given that workers in government and defense-critical
| industries weren't exactly rounded up a la carte to work
| the fields. Not when there was a dedicated class of
| kolhozniks that were paid next to nothing, and couldn't
| really leave the countryside for better jobs in the
| cities.
|
| But now that you mention it, I would pay good money to
| see the likes of Peter Thiel spend a few weeks a year
| picking strawberries, or filling grocery bags, or
| piloting a shitbarge up the Hudson river along with the
| rest of us. I do keep hearing from that half of the
| political spectrum that hard, poorly paid work, and
| pulling yourself up by the bootstraps builds character...
| atherpayer wrote:
| atherpayer wrote:
| achenet wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the comment you are responding to was
| being ironic ;)
| MikePlacid wrote:
| >Something about this doesn't seem to entirely add up
|
| I kinda think I should write an essay about the life of a
| software engineer in the Soviet Union. It is always
| interesting to get reactions of un-believe to simple
| truths, known to everybody with the same "living
| experience". What stops me - my English is bad and
| Russians know all this already. Still, let me do what I
| can.
|
| So, software engineers and the food supply. I worked as a
| software engineer in a biological research center. I've
| participated in the practice described below from 1979 to
| 1991, 1991 being the last year of the planned economy.
| Each employee has a quota to be fulfilled in the
| collective farm fields, like 20 days a year. Each
| morning, weekends including, a big number of buses was
| coming to the city center. Our research institution was
| assigned one bus. We packed in it and were driven into
| the fields. There was a quota to be done by each until
| afternoon: planting, tending or harvesting depending on
| the season. In the afternoon like "before lunch" buses
| arrived to take us back to the city. You were free from
| work this day, but paid in full. You were also paid for
| the work done in the fields. Twice paid for a half of a
| day's work.
|
| No one was exempt from the farm work quota, nor
| government workers, nor defense contractors from a county
| seat 20 miles away.
|
| So the whole system was not especially cruel, but
| extremely ineffective, like the life in the late Soviet
| Union in general - do not forget these buses with their
| fuel, some of them bringing people from 20 miles away -
| for half a day's work.
|
| ( In 1990 yours truly organized and participated in an
| economic experiment, reducing some of the costs. Instead
| of giving a quota to each co-worker, we've organized a
| team of volunteers, spent whole days in the field and
| were done with the quota for the whole institution in a
| week or so. This was a back-breaking affair, but earned a
| good money. I've sent a letter to the county newspaper
| with a proud name Kommunist, describing the "experiment".
| They published it, but they also published "letters from
| workers" naming me "the enemy of the people". )
|
| Some misconceptions to correct, if I may.
|
| >in the 1940s, when people were packed into train cars to
| bring in the harvest
|
| Incarceration rates in Stalin times were less than
| incarceration rates in present Texas or Luisiana. So not
| much could have been done using inmates labor only.
|
| >dedicated class of kolhozniks that were paid next to
| nothing,
|
| Kolhozniks in my time were paid 2-3 times _more_ than a
| software engineer. Not that was much, but still.
|
| >and couldn't really leave the countryside for better
| jobs in the cities.
|
| This practice ended in 1965. Free movement of people was
| restricted in general though, meaning you have to jump
| through some stupid obstacles to move, but absolutely
| possible.
|
| >I would pay good money to see the likes of Peter Thiel
| spend a few weeks a year picking strawberries
|
| This is a strange wish. If Thiel is a good person, he
| will work along with you, yes. But if he is the bad guy
| like I guess you've implied - he will be a supervisor
| over you packing strawberries. Some things never change
| with a change of a political system.
| patentatt wrote:
| Not saying that wasn't difficult, but that actually
| sounds pretty cool to me.
|
| And not to be overly pedantic (although we are on hn
| here, and when in Rome...), but leading American
| socialist movements are focused on democratic socialism,
| much like many European countries where I'm pretty sure
| forced agrarian labor isn't a thing.
| agumonkey wrote:
| If you add bluetooth or lora I think you got the future
| right.
| bee_rider wrote:
| They work for some people not others I guess.
|
| I was a cashier for a couple summers. There were a couple
| members of staff that were really experienced experts who
| could really fly through the checkout, but there were
| plenty of us that were just kids working over the
| summer...
|
| Supermarkets have always looked to save cost, it is a
| price sensitive business after all. At some point you'd
| give a list to the clerk and they'd put your order
| together. I'm sure people were annoyed when they had to
| start doing that clerk's job.
| jmeister wrote:
| >We may need this, but the stakeholders holding the purse
| strings don't. And they are the ones who will decide what
| gets built.
|
| It has never been easier to build a business(software). Labor
| is abundant, and the tech boom has created a million Medicis
| willing to throw money at wild things. Look at FTX fund for
| example.
| ugh123 wrote:
| wow what a garbage site that is. ussanews*.com
| chinabot wrote:
| My laptop is a 1000x the power of the one I had 15 years ago
| yet I am still stuck with the same hourglass due to shit,
| bloated and over-complex software stacks. Tell me I'm at peak
| tech when this is no longer the case.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| There's no way this is true. You simply aren't accurately
| remembering the actual experience of using that laptop 15
| years ago. For starters, the laptop 15 years ago was using a
| spinning rust hard disk, so everything was much slower
| compared to today's lightning fast SSD. I remember when it
| used to take minutes to boot up a laptop and launch a few
| applications, and it took almost that long to resume from
| hibernation. Modern laptops are much, much faster.
| godelski wrote:
| I think they are in agreement and retorting the gp who said
| we are at peak computing. Clearly we aren't if their
| programs are not launched instantly. Clearly there is room
| for improvement.
| godelski wrote:
| I'm with you. The previous sentiment is similar to 35mb of
| RAM is all you'll ever need. Instead computers are a "build
| it and they will come" paradigm. Hardware innovation happened
| in the US when it was cheap and accessible. Not it happens in
| Shenzhen, where it is cheap and accessible. Programming
| innovation accelerated when computers became cheap and
| accessible. I don't see us slowing down anytime soon because
| you can literally put a computer in anything, and people are
| trying. Cheaper and more powerful chips just means we can
| expand into more domains.
| Defitio wrote:
| I rethought my reaction to Google IO conference: I found it
| boring because they showed things which do not have an impact
| on me.
|
| Like 'taking better pictures when you a person of non white
| color's but that's the wrong attitude. They solve great issues
| like this and I'm probably more underwhelmed that we even had
| to fix something like this because it wasn't really solved
| before.
|
| Let's see if/when we get a more stable timeframe back. With
| COVID and the Russians it's shitty and climate change might
| already be a regular constant.
| Bloating wrote:
| Climate Change has been a regular constant since there was a
| climate
| ajross wrote:
| This is actually sort of a strawman. It relies on a definition
| for "tech" that's different from the English word "technology".
| You're talking about "peak {tech industry as defined by the
| last three decades of investment behavior}", and... OK, there's
| an argument there.
|
| But to argue that technology as a whole has stopped is... well,
| not irrefutable, but almost certainly wrong. And if it's right,
| wow, is that bleak.
|
| Constructed more naturally, your statement here:
|
| > we need to make better, more humane and effective technology,
| not just more and more and more of it.
|
| Is certainly true, but frankly is just a tautology.
| "Technology" as commonly understood means new stuff that makes
| people's lives better.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| I hoped it was obvious that I chose the word "tech" to mean
| something less than a grandiose Francis Fukuyama style
| comment on "The End of Technology".
| ajross wrote:
| Yes, but you conflated the two to make your argument.
| Saying "peak tech is over" to mean "the VC-driven startup
| grider is out of gas" is fine! Saying that it's over
| because technology isn't making people's lives better is
| wrong, because that's what "technology" _does_ , and it
| doesn't appear to be slowing down to me.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > Saying that it's over because technology isn't making
| people's lives better is wrong, because that's what
| "technology" does, and it doesn't appear to be slowing
| down to me.
|
| I see two errors here.
|
| Defining technology to be "that thing which makes
| people's lives better" feels weak, even disingenuous,
| because trivially nuclear missiles and weaponised
| smallpox are technologies that fail your test.
|
| Therefore, there exist technologies that can make
| peoples' lives worse.
|
| The second issue is with your subjective "(people's lives
| getting better) doesn't appear to be slowing down _to me_
| ". It's a view you're entitled to hold of course. Maybe
| you are not aware of other perspectives. It may have
| escaped your notice that in the last decade digital
| technologies have substantially changed in their nature.
| They've been at the centre of scandals over the erosion
| of democratic values, decline in education, attention
| disorders, social fragmentation, childhood depression,
| pollution and e-waste, conflict minerals, energy
| consumption, loss of privacy, dignity and rights... Must
| I go on?
|
| To hold the idea that "all technologies naturally improve
| human life" _by definition alone_ seems like a desperate
| escape from the facts.
| ajross wrote:
| > scandals over the erosion of democratic values, decline
| in education, attention disorders, social fragmentation,
| childhood depression, pollution and e-waste, conflict
| minerals, energy consumption, loss of privacy, dignity
| and rights... Must I go on?
|
| Please don't. OK, I get it now. Your point above wasn't
| about "peak tech" at all[1], it was about this part,
| which you didn't mention. I think you're wrong, FWIW, but
| am not going to engage.
|
| [1] In _either_ the sense of "peak tech startup
| investment activity" or "technological progress as
| commonly undeerstood".
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > In either the sense of "peak tech startup investment
| activity" or "technological progress as commonly
| undeerstood".
|
| "Peak tech" is two words I just pulled out of my arse an
| hour ago.
|
| Let's define it together.
|
| For me it's a palpable sentiment not a definition. But
| some people here seem to "get it".
|
| The "tech industry" is not just an activity, it's a
| culture. Many of us, including (particularly?) developers
| are increasingly fed-up and disappointed by the direction
| digital technology is going. Not because we dislike
| technology, but because of what a minority are doing with
| it to gain power and wealth to the detriment of everyone
| else.
|
| I don't think things will change for those investors who
| are smart enough to see the writing on the wall and
| switch (as they are doing) to physical technologies. FWIW
| I love the startup mind-set.
|
| But this cynical flogging of surveillance capitalism,
| screwing over users, social control and smartphone
| bandwagon has been sticking in people's throats _way_
| beyond this community for some time.
|
| The pain and anxiety equals or outweighs the perceived
| benefits - not just to a few geeks - but to people like
| my parents, siblings and neighbours.
|
| That's "peak tech" for me.
| ansible wrote:
| I disagree. We've already passed the tipping point for tech,
| and investment will continue to accelerate. This is true for
| various form of artificial intelligence, and the rest of tech.
|
| Businesses in general started to see the appeal around the time
| that the Google Assistant, Cortana, Alexa and Siri started to
| become actually useful and desired by the general public.
| Because of that, there will continue to be a push to extend and
| enhance those capabilities.
|
| The current systems can turn a normally worded question into a
| web search, and present the results in a pleasing manner. The
| next step is to extend the ability of the systems to actually
| understand wider and wider ranges of questions. We are still a
| ways away from having free-flowing conversations with our
| computers, but there are many steps along the way that are
| useful of themselves. Advancing this technology is a
| competitive advantage, and becomes key to drawing in and
| keeping people in one of the various tech ecosystems (Google,
| Microsoft, Amazon, Apple).
|
| In the wider business world, people are finding new and better
| ways to apply this technology.
| varispeed wrote:
| > The current systems can turn a normally worded question
| into a web search, and present the results in a pleasing
| manner.
|
| Pleasing but not useful. I really miss Google search from 10
| years ago. I think things started going downhill when they
| introduced the instant search feature. Nowadays it's
| difficult to find anything. The results are mostly irrelevant
| and littered with spam and AI written nonsense. I remember I
| could go through hundreds of result pages and find useful
| things on the tail end, now quite often I get one page only
| and nothing is relevant to my search term. I have to often
| use quotation marks etc, but even that stops being helpful -
| basically more often than not I get no results at all.
| time_to_smile wrote:
| Huge amounts of our current tech industry have yet to prove
| they can even make a profit. I'm pretty sure than in a few
| more months we'll find out they _can 't_.
|
| I work for a fairly large, fairly successful company and I'm
| having to explain to my team how to quantify the business
| value of a product, like showing that the value provided to
| customer in terms of dollars is greater than the cost of the
| service we provide. It's an uphill battle, because we've
| lived in a bubble so long people don't even remember this
| basic fundamental of business.
|
| The tech industry exploded because of cheap money, but by and
| large has completely failed to extract actual value from the
| technology.
|
| Even when I list out the "tech" products I do use frequently
| (Uber, Door Dash and the like) I realize that the products
| they offer are basically investor charity since they cannot
| be sustained indefinitely at the price point they're offered
| (and they don't make sense if they charge more).
|
| Of the actual technology I use, the vast majority has barely
| changed in a decade. The most impressive thing I've purchased
| in years is finally getting an RTX 3070 and that is just
| "neat!". Anyone who remembers the release of the original
| iPhone will instantly recognize that despite the trillions
| spend in the tech industry, nothing quite as game changing as
| that has come out since. Google search was also better back
| then.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| I disagree current systems can turn a web search that
| presents results in a pleasing manner. I had a horrible time
| trying to find a specific musician's work on YouTube just
| last night. It kept recommending me completely unrelated vids
| as if I was browsing just to browse. It couldn't seem to
| comprehend that even though I usually watch cute cat videos
| today I am searching for music, even when I was exact quoting
| the author's name.
|
| I think technology has shifted from giving me what I want to
| telling me what I want. I really dislike it.
| Rury wrote:
| I think a part of this problem is just simply a matter of
| scale. As more and more information gets generated and
| stored on the internet, finding the information you exactly
| need in 3-5 words typed into a search engine at some point
| just ceases to become probable or even possible. So search
| engines have to predict what you want based upon the
| limited information you give it (and does this using others
| things such as how often something is visited, search
| patterns, trends, and/or related promotions), and you end
| up perceiving it as it telling you what you want.
|
| Sadly giving a search engine too many words can stop it
| from even searching, probably because that would cause a
| scan or result in a very time and computer/resource
| intensive search. So it doesn't even bother searching and
| tells you it couldn't find anything.
| foobarian wrote:
| The current Alexa experience is like guessing the syntax in
| the early 90s adventure games. It's horrible :-)
| bornfreddy wrote:
| But man does it feel good when you guess correctly. :-)
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Wait, has anyone made audio interactive fiction on Alexa?
| Sounds like a killer app for those who've played text
| adventures.
| paxys wrote:
| There is no such thing as "peak tech". There are simply
| alternating periods of faster and slower growth, and we are
| currently in the latter.
| bobkazamakis wrote:
| Do you think these alternative cycles are always the same
| amplitude? or do you think maybe... we're at peak amplitude
| of that tech growth cycle that won't be seen again without
| another major breakthrough technology?
|
| Or I guess we can just be pendantic. There are no such thing
| as alternating periods, all periods of time are exactly the
| same!
| victor9000 wrote:
| Ah yes... pedantic contrarianism, unsupported and bluntly
| stated as fact, the lifeblood of HN threads.
| agumonkey wrote:
| In terms of human existence tech is overwhelmingly above the
| average person need. It's not providing anything beside more
| addictive paths. You don't need more resolution, more
| bandwidth, more anything.. you probably need less, or more
| space to reflect and live outside the networked digital
| realm.
|
| ps: to add a bit more, from the few chats I have, people are
| either saying "well I need that to check my bank account or
| pay taxes" or "well I need that so I can binge on netflix"
| yazaddaruvala wrote:
| > You don't need more resolution, more bandwidth, more
| anything.. you probably need less, or more space to reflect
| and live outside the networked digital realm.
|
| Better tech is how humans (all of them - rather than the
| few) get more space to reflect and live outside.
| helmholtz wrote:
| As _always_ , it is a question of degree. A young adult
| in the 70s had plenty of time to reflect and live
| outside. The technology of the preceding 50 years has not
| made this more accessible. If anything, the slot-machine
| nature of our computing reduces the likelihood of it.
| agumonkey wrote:
| That's shallow. Current tech does not help. You have to
| filter data, organize, manage bookmarks, fomo,
| notifications, slippery software.
|
| Better is subtle. Nothing is a straight line.
| acchow wrote:
| > It's not providing anything
|
| The Ancient Greek philosophers used to say this about
| writing and reading
| [deleted]
| jonas21 wrote:
| > In terms of human existence tech is overwhelmingly above
| the average person need.
|
| People have been saying this about technology for as long
| as technology has existed.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Fair point but there are a few factors: that tool is
| having a lot of side effects, it went from a mysterious
| side piece of your life to a central addictive plane. I
| can't think of any tech that backfired that much. Your
| computer is underutilized, and its capacity is often
| above its users intellectually. We never had tools of
| that kind before, and I'm not sure people will feel the
| need for more. I personally am completely off the market.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > People have been saying this about technology for as
| long as technology has existed.
|
| Have they? It kinda sounds "truthy" but if ever there was
| an unfalsifiable claim that's gotta be a contender.
|
| I'm no general historian but think for the most-part
| people have enthused over and coveted technologies for
| thousands of years.
|
| With the exception of occasional religious objections to
| "magic" it was the Luddites during the industrial
| revolution whose first stirrings of discontent emerged.
|
| Even the early critical science-fiction of H.G Wells and
| Mary Shelley was tepid and poetic.
|
| Much later, in the late 1960s, comes the first modern
| tech-critique, and much of that is driven by affairs
| relating to environmental and war problems, Vietnam, oil
| crisis, DDT... way before the Internet.
|
| The idea that we have a surfeit of technological
| capability, or perhaps just too much of the wrong type,
| seems very contemporary to me.
| time_to_smile wrote:
| There absolutely is decline in tech, largely made by market
| demanded tradeoffs.
|
| For example cell phones _still_ sound worse than land lines
| did in the 90s. We just don 't care, and don't have a choice
| anyway (even most landlines are ultimately going to interface
| with a digital connection).
|
| Refrigerators have more gizmos than before, but one of the
| key features, reliability, is in decline.
|
| Personal computers are increasing moving back to a client
| server model which is absolutely a step back from where we
| were a decade or more ago. When the services behind all the
| billion SaaS apps we consume disappear so will the tools
| themselves.
|
| Market conditions have virtually eliminated software you
| _own_.
|
| I suspect this trend will increase dramatically over the next
| decade where most of the devices and tools we use are
| objectively worse than what we're using today.
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