6 ms·
Like water, food, and electricity, electronics have become an integral part of life. Every single country that can afford to bootstrap their own semiconductor m
by hda2 5y ago
Like water, food, and electricity, electronics have become an integral part of life. Every single country that can afford to bootstrap their own semiconductor manufacturing infrastructure should be scrambling to do so.
This infrastructure doesn't have to be cutting edge. Even 90s-era tech should be enough to cover a country's basic needs in case of a global collapse or shortage.
It's insane for humanity to continue putting their eggs in one or two baskets.
- whatshisface 5y agoI think you're leaving a few things off the list. Gasoline, steel, machine shops, chemical plants... by the time you added everything that could lead to crisis if it ran out or stopped working you'd be a proponent of the Juche Idea. ;)
- hda2 5y agoMost countries I know of already consider power and basic manufacturing (chemical, construction) to be crucial, and do their best to secure their production or procurement. My argument is that semiconductor manufacturing must also be added to that list. A natural disaster or a war between two countries shouldn't lead to wide-spread famine or throw humanity back into the dark ages.
- pasabagi 5y agoWould it be the dark ages, though? I don't think it would be so terrible if we were all thrown back to PDP 11's or something, and there's no way it could ever be anywhere near that drastic. Hardware advances are nice, but the main innovations in computers have been infrastructural and social (the internet, email, open source, etc).
- whatshisface 5y agoDon't forget about engine control computers, which are necessary for much of today's ICE efficiency gains.
- pasabagi 5y agoOr, as the volkswagen scandal showed us, necessary for most of today's ICE's to pretend to be more efficient than they are by cheating emissions tests :).
- unethical_ban 5y agoEarlier today I was thinking about this positively. None of my ideas are original, but some anti-corporatism thought struck a chord today. Why do we rely on dictatorships and unstable countries for critical infrastructure? Why do we rely on slave labor overseas for such basics as textiles when we could make it here? It isn't "markets" that are wrong altogether, but there is something destabilizing and unethical about shipping a neighbor's job away to a slave to save a penny for the stockholder. Supply chains and globalization should be very much rethought in this century.
- jhugo 5y ago> Why do we rely on slave labor overseas for such basics as textiles when we could make it here? Calling it slave labour is a great sound bite but glosses over the wide variety in working conditions "overseas", and the fact that trade has vastly improved conditions in many such "overseas" countries. I have broadly the opposite view about supply chains and globalisation; the inter-reliance of countries and the trade in labour/goods/services leads to diplomacy, negotiation, communication, better understanding and ultimately a safer, better world. History has demonstrated this consistently if you take a long view. The direction of "make everything in your own country, rely on no other country for anything" is the opposite to all of the above: less need for diplomacy, less leverage in negotiation, less communication, less understanding. That's a sad direction for the world to move in.
- riffraff 5y agoIt's worth noting this was one of the foundations of the European free market and then the European union: make the European countries so integrated that a war becomes unthinkable.
- unethical_ban 5y agoYes, good counterpoint. And to the other poster, yes, the EU was apparently designed with this point explicitly in mind. However, the EU countries are on the same order of magnitude of wealth. Is there any point at which we say "it is wrong to remove wealth from my country, put a fraction of it into working conditions unthinkable in my country, and let the owners of the means of production pocket the rest"? Shouldn't we mandate US-like living conditions and safety regulations if we are going to ethically export labor?
- siva7 5y agoSure, it’s called critical infrastructure and semiconductor should be added to this list.
- chongli 5y agoThe hard part is what to do with 90s-era tech when times are good? Nobody’s buying that old stuff (hobbyists aside). So then you just run these plants at a loss? I’d hate to be an engineer at one of those places. Seems like very soul-crushing work.
- vharuck 5y agoOne option is government subsidies, like what's done for farms and military hardware. Just keep buying it up, even if it rots or rusts. The goal is to make sure those industries remain healthy and don't slip back in expertise.
- onionisafruit 5y agoMost governments can’t afford to do that.
- hda2 5y agoI'm pretty sure the majority of countries can. We're talking 90s-era infrastructure that costs less than a single modern passenger airplane to build and run. Governments can subsidize their use in local industries or even build the infrastructure themselves doing what many governments already do with power, telecommunications, and transport.
- quartesixte 5y agoThe vast majority of countries, I reckon, don’t have enough domestic stability or human resources to maintain any sort of thing like that. Let alone the capital. It takes a small army to run a industrial-production level facility, a few of which need advanced degrees and experience. The G7 and G20 aren’t an exclusive club for nothing. There are real things behind GDP.
- KirillPanov 5y agoEvery government can afford that: simply tariff the imports that threaten to displace this capability. If that makes goods too expensive for the population (it won't) they couldn't afford them anyways. They were simply paying for the goods by mortgaging their future.
- jeswin 5y agoOr at the very least, have the entire supply chain set up within democracies. With redundancy.
- anonfornoreason 5y agoAhh yes then we can continue exporting “democracy” as defined by the CIA
- jhugo 5y agoThen you have to start to define what a democracy is, or at least what kind of democracy you are happy with. The current approach (of companies having specific requirements for their supply chain regarding labour practices etc) seems better than that.
- pharke 5y agoThe UN already provides election monitoring services so we have a well defined set of criteria under which we consider elections to be free and fair.
- jhugo 5y agoOK, so we decide that a democracy == "has free and fair elections by the UN criteria". That seems perfectly reasonable on the face of it. So let's say that we have a democracy by that definition, for example Myanmar — a big garment exporter — in 2020 or so. The 2020 elections were described by international organisations as "free and fair". Should the result of the coup d'état that happened shortly after those elections be that not only do the garment workers lose their right to vote in future free and fair elections, but they also lose their jobs when the factories are closed due to foreign countries introducing their "don't trade with non-democracies" policy? Do we think that would improve or worsen the situation?
- pharke 5y agoWhat's worse, inciting widespread discontent with a government that has illegally seized power potentially leading to a violent overthrow of said government or continuing to deal with that government in perpetuity while they abuse their people? In other words, how do you quantify and measure human suffering? Is it better or worse for there to be more acute suffering for less time or somewhat less suffering for a much longer period of time? It's not an easy choice when human lives hang in the balance. My view is that allowing authoritarians to entrench themselves for years, generations, possibly centuries is by far worse. We know that democracy is a fragile state of affairs. It rarely occurs without a violent overthrow of the elite and often doesn't last very long. Despotism, on the other hand, is common and long lasting because it is unabashed about cowing people through violence, torture, murder, blackmail, and all the other evils you can imagine. If we want to keep our freedom we must continually resist all attempts to take it.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- the_duke 5y agoI have the exact opposite opinion. Mandatory trade relationsips and closely interconnected supply chains are an important factor in preventing larger wars.
- KirillPanov 5y agoThat's Cold War thinking: "if goods cross borders, soldiers won't". The reality slowly dawning on us is that if goods cross borders, soliders don't have to.
- hypertele-Xii 5y agoConsidering Russia is in the process of invading Ukraine, I for one as a Finn maintain my cold war thinking, thank you very much. The winter war of 1940 was 82 years ago. How many generations of humans is that, three? My dad's dad's dad literally lied in the snow, hungry and high on german combat drugs so as to not fall asleep nor care of the freezing cold, waiting for a hundred russians to march in on his position, and he survived with grenade shrapnel in his leg. The cold war maybe felt cold on the other side of the globe. Was very much hot here. My country is barely older than peace is.
- comboy 5y agoMost countries have 90s-era fabs [1]. That is not rocket science. But EUV is. And all new processors depend on it. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat...
- hypertele-Xii 5y ago> It's insane for humanity to continue putting their eggs in one or two baskets. Kinda funny when you consider we literally put all our eggs in exactly two baskets, both on males and females.