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Is America Stealing TSMC?
- ChuckNorris89 4y agoNot stealing. More like convincing.
- conviencefee999 4y agoTSMC was given it's monopoly through patents given by GE, it's hard to understand the levels of strange nationalism and subtle racism in many of these videos but from my understanding it's the fear of the US leaving Taiwan to China which is very unlikely to happen for the foreseeable future. Taiwan holding the semiconductor industry hostage is not very good for global trade. The Taiwanese as well do not experience an increase in quality of life due to it besides in small groups and causes people who wish to undergo this industry to not be able to find jobs suitable towards them.
- yucky 4y ago"We gave them an offer they couldn't refuse".
- Oxidation 4y agoWhile indeed it might not be a "technology transfer" in the usual sense, it seems to me that there's not much need for the US to actually use technology transfers. Technology transfer is only partly about being able to make things yourself to save money: it's also about securing the supply chain against "non-violent" foreign interferences: trade wars, sanctions, etc. If the US was worried about that, they might consider it, but no one has the power to do that to them. Instead, this is more about physical security of the supply chain. They don't need to "officially own" the IP, they just need enough of it safe. They have other ways of making sure that they can have access to the results of that IP on favourable terms. And, like oil, at that scales, it's not critical to be the sole producer of something, as long as all the other producers denominate their output in your currency. And TSMC already denominates in dollars.
- lvl102 4y agoThe tech is mostly from US funded research. Taiwan itself wouldn’t even exist without US military. Give me a break.
- lma21 4y agolol, what kind of reason is that? Existing thanks to the US' military means what exactly?
- Oxidation 4y ago"I put the food on the table in this house and you will respect me, or so help me God I'll give you something to cry about."
- CyanBird 4y agoTo be an enemy of America can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.” — Henry Kissinger That's what the parent comment meant
- refurb 4y agoTaiwan as a sovereign state wouldn’t exist without US backing. And at least reading between the lines with China, Taiwans days are numbered. They’re choice is move their factories offshore or give them up to China.
- martin_a 4y ago> give them up to China I'm not sure the US would let this happen. Maybe they'd just level the factories with cruise missiles before China can get hold of them.
- tartuffe78 4y agoMaybe if it was a WW3 scenario, but otherwise where would we get our chips?
- 4y ago
- porkbrain 4y agoSeems like a well sourced video. Here are some notes of what's discussed: - The factories are not joint ventures, they are fully owned by Taiwan. - Build-outs in US are not going to be the most cutting edge technology. - TSMC has ~$36bn in capital expenditures in 2022. The Arizona fab is ~$9bn a year. Majority of TSMC investment remains in Taiwan. - TSMC produces ~15m waifers a year, ~80% produced in Taiwan. Arizona fab will produce ~250k waifers a year from 2024, ~500k from 2026. - TSMC has at least 5 other build outs in Taiwan. - The notion that US is going to be self sufficient in terms of chips thanks to the Arizona fab is flawed: 1. By volume, most chips are not what this fab is going to ship. 2. There are other chip foundries with specialty processes in Taiwan. 3. Taiwan leads the rest of the pipeline: assembly, packaging and testing.
- KptMarchewa 4y ago40 billion, not 9. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-63883047 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-63883047
- Oxidation 4y agoPer year, it's about $9 billion; 40 is the total.
- vitium_casiri 4y agoI'm pretty sure the first fab they announced was not going to be leading node but the one announced more recently is.
- brookst 4y agoAre the fans owned by Taiwan, or TSMC? Those are not the same thing. And how many of TSMC’s 15m wafers/year are recent nodes? If the majority are 60nm that’s not a super meaningful number. I agree that this TSMC investment is not going to make the US self sufficient by totally replacing all Taiwan-made chips with US-owned production. But I don’t think anyone ever made that claim?
- dirtyid 4y agoExcept video skips the primary purpose/argument of reshoring onto US soil is de-risking in case of potential PRC-TW scenario. In which case US will likely nationalize these fabs, aka stealing, for even the small but critical strategical capacity they fill. The more accurate assessment is America is setting up contingency to steal some of TSMC in event of PRC trying to steal most of TSMC. Or that Chang wasn't exactly enthused to build Arizona fabs, and even now question the viability with subsidies. Like how would one attribute intentions of powerful party A persuading/coercing weak party B to build likely loss making venture against B's desires, out of the way in A's backyard, on the premise that one day, A will confiscate venture from B.
- big8ang 4y agoForce but not stealing
- marmarama 4y agoNo more than Toyota having a factory in the US is "stealing" Toyota. Manufacturers in almost all sectors, including silicon foundries, have had manufacturing operations worldwide for decades. Centuries even. For all sorts of economic, customer, and government reasons, as well as simple diversification. Taiwan is still going to be TSMC's home base. Besides, if TSMC didn't open a US foundry then the US government would just throw money at Intel's foundry operation until they caught up. They're not that far behind. To be honest that's probably going to happen anyway.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kimmik 4y agoIn 20 years when tsmc has effectively transferred to america, taiwan will stop being contested and go the way of other chinese islands like hk. This is the logical solution to the us-china cold war.
- pjc50 4y agoI don't see why the Taiwanese would go quietly.
- justaman 4y agoIt will be a carbon copy of HongKongers
- speed_spread 4y agoNot even close. Hong Kong was at the end of a 100 year lease to UK from mainland China. Taiwan is China's previous regime military holdout. There is no soft (diplomatical) path for it's reintegration into mainland, ever. Observe that HK's didn't go that smoothly, either even if it was only a "change of administration".
- yucky 4y ago> Taiwan is China's previous regime military holdout. Yeah but those guys are all dead, so you're relying on 2nd & 3rd generation citizens to hold the same values. That doesn't generally happen.
- pjc50 4y agoTaiwanese may also have the value of "having free elections", I hear those are quite popular and people may not want to give them up. Especially now they can see what happened to HK.
- readthenotes1 4y ago
- CyanLite2 4y agoIs HN doing so bad these days that we now have to link to clickbait YouTube videos?
- wyuenho 4y agoIs HN doing so bad these days that people don't even bother to check the channel or listen to the first 1 min of the video before commenting? Take my downvotes.
- gibspaulding 4y agoI'm looking forward to a nicely packaged AI transcription service for videos. More than just generated captions, but completely converting the video to an article with section headers, screenshots, cleaned up text, etc. A lot of folks (such as myself) really don't like video content.
- wyuenho 4y agoNot liking a video isn't an excuse to kneejerk comments.
- luma 4y agoAsianometry is a pretty well sourced and researched channel focused on this exact field. I don't know that it's fair to call this "clickbait", the title is in response to a growing meme around Taiwan and the video makes the case to refute the point.
- farisjarrah 4y agoThe video title is based on real sentiment from people in Taiwan. Asianometry is a treasure trove of easily accessible information on semi-conductor manufacturing, and business in Asia. I highly suggest you watch the video before passing judgement. Asianometry videos are no nonesense, no filler, and very eloquently explain current and past events and businesses.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
- chrsw 4y agoI'm an American in the tech industry (shocker). I've worked in chip design, but not chip manufacturing. I don't know very much about the manufacturing side of things but I know enough to confidently say the industry is huge and very much entagled with the global economy. It's not going to turn around overnight, or overdecade, if that's even a word. But beyond that, I look where our country is, our values and our culture and I wonder to myself "Do we have what it takes to compete in the 21st century?".
- chrsw 4y agoI wonder which part of this got me downvoted, the 1st or the 2nd.
- eternalban 4y ago(not a downvoter) The timeline to turn the ship around is misleading, whereas ironically if you reflect on turnaround time involved in this critical industry should highlight what is happening. Taiwan apparently got where it is because of a smart/lucky bet a couple of decades ago. When it made that bet, it wasn't evident it would lead to it being the king of chip manufacturing. As a strategic, capital and ip intensive, this industry is national security level policy for all concerned, consumers and producers and middle men, and instability in global production chain in this industry upsets policy and planning goals, and creates insecurities. That a political disagreement (US & China) would result in creating insecurity, in a globalist context, regarding chip manufacturing for the next few decades, is a sort of crossing of Rubicon. As for your second paragraph, don't worry: in the same exact way that starting in 90s corporate controlled culture (which is pretty much everything) had a coordinated campaign to create the image of the New Globalist American (went by a variety of labels) comfortable with the idea of being a "service economy" and their political views shaped to be adaptable to a internationalist mindset. Now that the globalist project appears to have failed, the corporate media will in due course adjust content, for the 'Adjusted American Model'. You should watch for this event, I predict it will happen soon. Masculine will be OK again. "It's the economy stupid" are possibly the only true words that came out of that mouth.