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How would that work in practice? Granted, the US might be able to manufacture critical components itself. What abou Italy? Honduras? Liechtenstein? Nigeria? Sho

How would that work in practice? Granted, the US might be able to manufacture critical components itself. What abou Italy? Honduras? Liechtenstein? Nigeria? Should they all produce their own hardware for national security concerns? And why stop there? Wouldn’t your suggestion in essence lead to countries fully self-supplying everything from food to cars to communication equipment to power stations and so on and so on. And not just manufacture every single component, but also source every base materials, crops, fertilizer and more. Arguably food safety or energy supply safety might even be more critical than semiconductor safety. Even when you reach at level of self-supply capability, you still need a chain of trust to ensure that you’re not compromised by your own government and intelligence agencies. IMHO, such an concept would lead to a perfect protectionist regime while not giving any real enhanced security at all.

lallysingh 8y ago
Final assembly of computers are a reasonable place. Destructively test critical parts to validate then, randomize usage to prevent targeted attacks. It's not even terribly hard. AFAIK you can buy all the tooling quite easily, and it's a well understood problem.
Kalium 8y ago
Having your key components produced somewhere where you have a measure of oversight and inspection abilities isn't the worst idea if you're concerned about this kind of attack. I would think countries would take a cost and risk-based approach. Countries that have the means, and who face major risks from a compromised supply chain compared to other standing risks, might want to think about moving things in-house. Honduras and Nigeria might have other, more pressing concerns. Liechtenstein in particular is a financial center with an extensive manufacturing base and attendant expertise, so it might be worth considering for them.
xenophonf 8y ago
Probably something similar to other aspects of the military-industrial complex. We buy guns and planes and rockets and ships and tanks we don't need because strategically, it's worthwhile to keep that manufacturing infrastructure (and more importantly, expertise) operating in case of the next world war.
nyolfen 8y ago
>What abou Italy? Honduras? Liechtenstein? Nigeria? Should they all produce their own hardware for national security concerns? And why stop there? wrt computers, why not if they're capable and willing? it has increasingly obvious and critical security considerations. russia already has a fledgling domestic processor industry for these reasons: https://thenextweb.com/insider/2017/05/25/russia-showcases-first-computers-based-indigenous-elbrus-8s-processor/ https://thenextweb.com/insider/2017/05/25/russia-showcases-f...
- sct202 8y ago
  Russia's processor industry is also still dependent on foreign fabs like TSMC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbrus-8S https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbrus-8S It seems like the main fabricators based in Russia are still working on getting below 90nm.
  - vanviegen 8y ago
    Sure, not many nations would be producing current-gen chips anytime soon. But in case the fan is hit, I imagine ~15 year old tech will make do just fine.
AnthonyMouse 8y ago
> What abou Italy? Honduras? Liechtenstein? Nigeria? Should they all produce their own hardware for national security concerns? There are two paths to making this work. One is domestic production, which as you say might work for the United States, but the other is supply diversity. If you don't have a local industry but there is one in Canada, Germany and South Korea, and those countries are your allies, you're probably fine. The issue comes when you're entirely reliant on a single country (e.g. China), especially when that country is undemocratic/authoritarian. Because that makes it too easy for them to betray you without you being able to do anything about it, significantly increasing the probability that they actually do it.
eximius 8y ago
> Arguably food safety or energy supply safety might even be more critical than semiconductor safety. Poisoning a population or depriving them of power is a great way to start a war. Peeking at their computers is merely espionage. So yes, food and power might be more important, but there exists sufficient political deterrent already.

lallysingh 8y ago

Final assembly of computers are a reasonable place. Destructively test critical parts to validate then, randomize usage to prevent targeted attacks. It's not even terribly hard. AFAIK you can buy all the tooling quite easily, and it's a well understood problem.

Kalium 8y ago

Having your key components produced somewhere where you have a measure of oversight and inspection abilities isn't the worst idea if you're concerned about this kind of attack. I would think countries would take a cost and risk-based approach. Countries that have the means, and who face major risks from a compromised supply chain compared to other standing risks, might want to think about moving things in-house. Honduras and Nigeria might have other, more pressing concerns. Liechtenstein in particular is a financial center with an extensive manufacturing base and attendant expertise, so it might be worth considering for them.

xenophonf 8y ago

Probably something similar to other aspects of the military-industrial complex. We buy guns and planes and rockets and ships and tanks we don't need because strategically, it's worthwhile to keep that manufacturing infrastructure (and more importantly, expertise) operating in case of the next world war.

nyolfen 8y ago

>What abou Italy? Honduras? Liechtenstein? Nigeria? Should they all produce their own hardware for national security concerns? And why stop there? wrt computers, why not if they're capable and willing? it has increasingly obvious and critical security considerations. russia already has a fledgling domestic processor industry for these reasons: https://thenextweb.com/insider/2017/05/25/russia-showcases-first-computers-based-indigenous-elbrus-8s-processor/ https://thenextweb.com/insider/2017/05/25/russia-showcases-f...

sct202 8y ago
Russia's processor industry is also still dependent on foreign fabs like TSMC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbrus-8S https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbrus-8S It seems like the main fabricators based in Russia are still working on getting below 90nm.
- vanviegen 8y ago
  Sure, not many nations would be producing current-gen chips anytime soon. But in case the fan is hit, I imagine ~15 year old tech will make do just fine.

AnthonyMouse 8y ago

> What abou Italy? Honduras? Liechtenstein? Nigeria? Should they all produce their own hardware for national security concerns? There are two paths to making this work. One is domestic production, which as you say might work for the United States, but the other is supply diversity. If you don't have a local industry but there is one in Canada, Germany and South Korea, and those countries are your allies, you're probably fine. The issue comes when you're entirely reliant on a single country (e.g. China), especially when that country is undemocratic/authoritarian. Because that makes it too easy for them to betray you without you being able to do anything about it, significantly increasing the probability that they actually do it.

eximius 8y ago

> Arguably food safety or energy supply safety might even be more critical than semiconductor safety. Poisoning a population or depriving them of power is a great way to start a war. Peeking at their computers is merely espionage. So yes, food and power might be more important, but there exists sufficient political deterrent already.