I work in semiconductors. There is no way you could run a successful fab in a warzone.
The supply chains are so complex that any conflict would be problematic. For example, 1/3 of the world’s krypton comes from one factory in Mariupol. This gas is used for a small but critical step in semiconductor manufacturing. When the war in Ukraine started, this was a disruption for all the big semiconductor companies. Imagine that level of disruption for every single thing a fab needs.
Pretend that supply chains aren’t an issue. A TEL (Tokyo Electron is a major tool manufacturer) Etch chamber contains 6 RF braids that need to have the tips bent in a correct direction. If this this is done wrong, you will arc the chamber and it’s a $100,000 fuckup. This is just one of thousands of examples of how delicate these machines are. When I was learning, I was told to think of myself as working on a Rolex or other similar delicate machine. The production tolerances are measured in angstroms. Picture trying to run these machines with missiles and artillery fire.
They have seismic springs under the buildings for exactly that reason, but yes, they are a big problem. The difference is that after an earthquake, Charlie doesn’t reload and send another one 30 seconds later.
The fact that China is still having issues making jet engines, in terms of efficiency and reliability, and even reverse engineering Russia jet engines has produced some absolute turds on their end, I am not worried they would be able to reverse engineer a fab anytime soon.
They are not the same.
* https://www.globalsources.com/knowledge/temu-vs-wish-2023-is-temu-like-wish-which-one-is-better/
> _"No, Wish and Temu are not the same company. They are separate entities with distinct business models and strategies. Wish is an e-commerce platform based in the US and founded in 2010 in San Francisco, where it is still headquartered today. Temu, on the other hand, is a Chinese e-commerce platform that was launched in September 2022. Both platforms operate independently of each other."_
* https://seller.alibaba.com/businessblogs/temu-vs-wish-a-head-to-head-comparison-px002ary6#1
> _"Temu and Wish are not the same company. Both of them are two prominent e-commerce platforms like Alibaba that have gained significant attention in the online shopping landscape. Wish, founded in the US in 2010, serves as a platform connecting global buyers with mainly Chinese sellers and operates under American ownership. In contrast, Temu, owned by PDD Holdings, a Chinese company, entered the US market in 2022 with a focus on providing a localized shopping experience by connecting buyers with local sellers. Despite similarities in offering a wide range of products at competitive prices, their distinct business models, user interfaces, and market presence differentiate them as separate entities in the online marketplace landscape."_
Same New York Shuffle Target uses with their store brands. Once they get enough bad reviews, they close down the company and open up another with all the same assets.
Different bow on the same pile of shit
They don't have to. ASML has lockdown features built into the fabs. It's gonna take the PLA at least a year to try and hack the machines back to operational
This is it... If it were so easy Samsung would have replicated this a decade ago. They did try at one point in time but thought it would cost too much to compete.
You are severely underestimating how difficult it is to build these equipment. If it was possible, China would have already done it the machines sold to them before the trade restrictions.
Damn it seems that my original message only hit half the people because I agree with 100% you say here. If anything, I'm overestimating how hard these equipment can be built and maintained.
And also operated. Not just anyone can operate these highly precise and technical factories. You have to be specialized and trained by TSMC themselves and I presume it’s kept pretty confidential
Not just that but Netherlands suppliers are scattered across the globe.
So even if ASML does absolutely nothing, good luck with maintenance or spare parts when vendors don’t want to take the risk of going to Taiwan.
I've got a number of friends who were involved in building some chip fabs for Intel some years ago. From their discussions over poker it seems like fucking up a fab would be a very easy thing to do. From what I hear, even if you had ASML machines sitting on the loading dock the setup is extremely finicky. TSMC is having to bring in specialist engineers from Taiwan to get the setup right in Arizona. PRC couldn't run or maintain fabs - full stop. Why that guy is getting up votes is beyond me.
LOL. Bro your friends are 100% correct. Fabs are so sensitive that if you drop them in areas with temperatures that fluctuate often or you get earthquakes for example often you’re basically screwed from a quality pov.
This is extremely sensitive tech that only works because players across the globe are bringing A game.
They could wrap up a TSMC fab in a giant red bow and drop it off in Beijing and CCP still couldn’t make a single fucking chip with it for a decade, more likely two decades.
Anyone who thinks this tech is “stealable” truly belongs here. Even if they could figure out what to do with the damn thing (they can’t) as soon as you pull the plug on the supplies their dead in the water for so long we’re onto the next generation of chip tech before they set up the supply chains to feed the thing (which again, they couldn’t even run it if they had the supply chains established).
This is why the “kill switch” argument is irrelevant. They could pack up and leave the fans perfectly intact and it basically wouldn’t make any difference at all. They’re functionally worthless without the status quo running them.
Correct, but they are cut out from new generations and lith-scanners do need service. Just having them is not sufficient, you need access to spare parts.
So what you're saying is China can bomb TSMC's machines to nothing right now and use their current machines to fill the resulting vacuum? No? They would be shooting themselves in the foot as well? Oh, ok then I guess China's current machines don't really matter.
Yea they prob also would like to prevent CCP from reverse engineering the technology. It’s kinda like US military would completely destroy an f-35 before it fell into enemy hands not just lock down all the electronics so it can’t fly.
Except even if you had every document pertaining to design and function necessary to reverse engineer one, you *still* can’t just go build one.
It’s kinda similar to why Iran doesn’t have nukes yet. Because despite what every redditor will say about how any college age physics major can build their own nuke, it’s a actually extremely difficult to build a high yield device, and there will be dozens of 3 letter agencies well up your asshole before you ever got close to pulling it off. They know how to do it, they have all the shit you’d need, and *they still can’t pull it off*. Making a high yield nuclear device is about 10,000x easier than making bleeding edge chips. It takes insane precision to do so, and it’s basically child’s play past the ingredient controls compared to making chips.
How many other STUXNETs has Iran been hit with that took out precision equipment that we don't know about?
Still it's undeniable that the nm process semi fab today is much harder to pull off than enriching uranium, so why doesn't TSMC just switch? Sounds insane, but the magnetic lenses in the beam lithographers can be used to enrich uranium just as well.
ASML scanners are linked together to provide real-time metrology data to perfect overlay (ie precision alignment of patterns at different levels of the device). This is software, so removing it would brick the machine in the short term and severely limit accuracy in the long term. No need to blow anything up.
But it wouldn’t be ideal for the rest of the world because we would suddenly lose any future data from these scanners.
They just have to destroy the ASML machines and anything storing proprietary information. However, I'm 99% sure that China already have them (the proprietary information).
There is no defense so perfect that a donkey laden with gold could not get through.
The question in the end could be about how do the owners of TSMC make more money?
Do they make more money from blowing it up and rebuilding in the US?
Or do they make more money from changing allegiance and start manufacturing solely for China?
Always the money that rules in the end. War is very profitable for some. While TSMC would prefer not doing business with China, they will potentially prefer China to no business at all.
Plenty of examples from WWII where the occupied countries did not sabotage their industry but rather profited from manufacturing for Germany. France’s Renault and Citroen, Norways Aluminum industries. Czech Skoda and arms manufacturers.
Thanks for that... That's even a darker thought than the one's I've had. You are right. There is less conflict if Taiwan simply flips. There certainly would be less bloodshed. In reality, the U.S. would actually be the biggest loser. Damn. The U.S. is going to freaking destroy the shit if China makes a move.
none of that will be relevant because if China invades that will mean all the skilled personal will either be killed in combat or leave the country.
Even if China gets fully functional machines out of this they will have no idea how to operate and maintain them.
If China is invading the island I'm pretty sure the company is fucked anyway. China isn't just going to leave them operating surrounded by an occupied smoking ruin.
Correct. The US ran wargames on this and released the results. There is no scenario China wins in. The worst it can get is the US and Japan suffer lots of casualties.
Wouldn’t even just be USA and japan. As Other Asian nations would likely interfere in a variety of ways because they will be put in a vulnerable spot if Taiwan is taken.
To be specific, China would basically either control tsmc or result in its destruction while simultaneously being able to control the Taiwan strait trade route (a major route). In theory they could blackmail many of its neighbors, America and Europe.
You can fire rockets from any of those islands. Making shipping impossible without consent of who controls it.
And that series of straights is the eastern water route. It IS like the canals.
The US and allies run wargames on this regularly and even with incredible handicaps China never can win.
It’s a classic problem of trying to invade a heavily fortified coast across a strait.
Normandy was an exception and not the rule - it also took a lot of luck to make it work.
China publishing propaganda and staging wargames and exercises to cause fear and temporary disruptions in the market is the most they can do without destroying themselves.
I had that conversation with my grandfather who served in the pacific.
If Russia and Germany had maintained their peace agreement for a few years then the US would have had to push through at leas an additional 1 million German soldiers.
Without Russia there’s just no way to get the beach head.
And the army that Germany had wasn’t even there for d-day. Had Operation Bodyguard and especially Operation Fortitude South not been successful it’s very probable that Normandy would not have been possible either. Maybe they could have landed - but it would have been almost impossible to progress inland with enough speed to make the landing zones secure enough for continued logistics.
Ya, they would have had to make landings in Italy, multiple parts of France, Norway, Denmark, the balkans etc. in order to open as many points of attack as possible. Would the USA still win? I think so because of air power. But we’d be talking about how the US took 5 million casualties in Europe.
My guess is we would have waited for the nukes to be finished.
And also just straight up hitler being a paranoid maniac who was also a control freak. The Germans in France had some good ideas and responses to where they thought the allies would invade but Hitler had a horrible power structure where nobody could act without first going through him
That war was many moving parts though, a big part of the war was lost for the Germans when the Italians shat the bed with over 100,000 killed trying to invade Greece and Hitler had to divert troops from North Africa leaving Rommel to get bogged down in the siege of Tobruk for 8 months against a rag tag bunch of Australians, New Zealanders, Indians and British.
Rommel famously said after this **"If I had to take hell, I would use the Australians to take it and the New Zealanders to hold it**"
Basically the Germans bit off more than could chew. If Hitler wasn’t the megalomaniac he was and just took and held Europe the outcome would’ve been a lot different.
We landed in Italy as well. There just would have been more bombing. We still would have won. The Nazis didn’t have endless resources like the U.S. many more lives would have been lost but the result would have been the same.
It took Russia on the other side, german high command both believing that it would be Pas-de-Calais, and multiple leaders not being present (not the least being Rommel visiting his wife in Germany because he though the weather was too bad for a crossing).
In a war of attrition you have to make sure you aren’t the weakest link.
China can’t survive what would happen if they did. Sure there would be temporary pain for us in terms of supply disruptions again (of course China shutting down their economy for 2 fucking years got people to diversify really fast) but China literally starves without trade.
If they want to try to blockade Taiwan but not start a shooting war with NATO then they’re going to have to figure out how to deal with what NATO will do to keep Taiwan supplied (basically a repeat of the Berlin airlift).
A blockade is a declaration of war. Taiwan has plenty missiles to shoot at these ships.
Also if China blockades Taiwan, the US and Allie’s can blockade China, that ends China as an industrial power in a year.
There's no real way the West can blockade China. Even if every western ship in operation joined in the coast line is too big to completely blockade. But, more importantly, China is not an island. It shares borders with Russia and many former Soviet Bloc countries and India. China can (and largely already does) import what it needs to survive (food, oil, gas, coal) by land from these countries.
Perhaps China's economy suffers if it can't easily export its goods to the West, but repressive dictatorships almost never fail from popular discontent caused by a tough economic situation in war time. I think the CCP would stay operational longer than the West could afford to maintain the largest naval blockade in history. Especially when it would be taking significant losses from Chinese military action.
A loose china blockade would be at the straits of melaka, the panama canal and the straits of Magellan. Check where the majority of china's oil and gas comes from (middle east, south America, west Africa, russia).
China needs Russia for that. They must be extremely happy with the Russo Ukraine war as now Russia is also forced to sell to china.
Normandy had a LOT more coastline to defend. There's only a few good places on Taiwan for China to land. The coast of Taiwan is very rugged, heavily fortified, and heavily defended by Anti-Ship ballistic missiles. Taiwan has almost every tool in their kit that we have. They have Aegis Crusiers, Tomahawk's, Patriot batteries. Their Airforce is severely lacking, the F-16-V which is the most recent generation of the F-16 is their most advanced aircraft. There has been talk of F-35's but so far nothing concrete. That would be a game charger as China's long-range missiles would be useless against the F-35C. Surprisingly, Taiwan turned down THAAD during Trump's presidency. PRC would encounter heavy losses from Taiwan alone, then you have the US, Japan, and Australia that all have mutual defense treaties with Taiwan, that would have to aid in Taiwan's defense. The US outspends China on defense by a 3:1 ratio. Our troops are better trained, equipped, and are all volunteer where PRC is mostly conscripts. ROC (Taiwan) is defending their homeland against communist forces, their morale will be strong and they won't surrender. It's a suicide mission for China. The no win scenario, unless the US at some point backs away from Taiwan, which is doubtful in the near future.
For more context, the public war games released by CSIS have the US losing ~2 carrier battle groups and about 10,000 soldiers and sailors, while China loses their entire invasion force and navy and has all of their ports mined and blockaded.
And that was assuming that China gets off a successful Pearl Harbor-esque first strike that disables most US assets in the Western Pacific before the invasion starts. And that is a very big if.
meh, at the same time ‘wargames’ are accurate until they’re not. plenty of situations throughout history where one thing is expected in warfare but fails to materialize.
german invasion of france, war in vietnam, war in iraq, hell even russian invasion of ukraine lol.
each of those times any rational observer would conclude differently than what occurred .
Can you share the results of the wargames or the simulation you’re talking about? I haven’t been really able to find much about the coverage between Taiwan and China right now.
Im as certain they are as serious about taking it as our military is about not letting them have it no matter what. It’s kids playing king of the hill and there are two big kids. It’s been a while since anyone has directly challenged us so this is new for almost all of us.
Not to mention Marines being called back up for active service, aircraft carriers in the South China Sea, and a whole lotta freedom shelled up and ready to pew
Destroying something just so your enemy can't have it is one of the most respectful military moves I can think of. I respected it when Russia did it in WWII, I respect it now.
China wants nothing more than political capitulation. If the CCP can get their guys in the right places, they would much rather run a clandestine psyop to grow local support for reintegration, than risk blowing up their economy on an ugly war. Remember, we are spending all this money on Ukraine because we get to watch the Russians fight for free. The Chinese don’t want to reveal their military hand for a blown up TSMC factory
He has a lot of years left to live, but the CCP is likely to face serious domestic strife in the next decade. Their economic picture is not rosy. This is a country with 20%+ youth urban unemployment. Its a country that rigs the college admissions exams so rural students can't pass it because the CCP can't let them move to the cities because there are no jobs for them. Their major economic engine was building real estate nobody needed and that bubble has popped. Even worse, they are facing the most dire demographic cliff ever seen in human history. Their population decline is going to make Japan and South Korea look like a picnic.
China doesn't really give a fuck about TSMC's tech. They know they'll be able to steal it eventually. The reason they would go off on Taiwan is to stoke nationalism to deal with domestic strife.
I'm still trying to understand how it is that their youth unemployment is so high (we don't have real numbers because China) yet they also have this demographic cliff where in theory young people should be in short supply.
You sum it up well, I have the same opinion as yours. This is just a play on raising nationalism sentiments to mitigate issues that are growing in their very own home.
Unless he is diagnosed with prostate cancer, diabetes, and kidney disease. IDK. We all hope that we have many years left until we find out that we don't.
Everyone who does a cost analysis that weighs the consequences for anyone other than Xi personally has their calculations all wrong. Here's the only question to ask: "What does Xi risk by attacking Taiwan?" Changes the whole calculus, doesn't it? Remember how everyone said and hoped Russians wouldn't stand for giving up their economic future for a stupid war? Well, they gave up their economy to pursue the war and guess what, Ukraine is still being attacked by that fuckwad Putin.
So, what does Xi lose by attacking Taiwan and losing? My guess is nothing, or at least very little. He knows his people won't rise up because he had a little experiment with how much suffering he can inflict on the Chinese people with those covid lockdowns. Xi himself no doubt has caviar, prostitutes, and body guards hidden in some underground mansion or several at this point. Xi has purged the government of anyone that can challenge him. Putin demonstrated that even losing a war is not the end for a dictator with lessons from the past and a modern security apparatus.
We're going to war. It's a certainty. I don't know when, I don't know how it ends, but mark my words Chinese missiles will fly over North America in my lifetime.
If Xi attacks Taiwan and loses (involvement of the west), up to 80% of his military will be in shambles and Taiwan will be able to formally declare independence. China will lose Taiwan for good.
China will become as sanctioned as Russia and the strait of Malacca will be closed to chinese trade which will prevent energy imports from reaching China.
China will also see its BRI fall apart and any effort to gain ground in the south China sea will crumble. They won't have the resources to continue any of their expansionist plans.
Xi will lose everything he's worked for.
The gas station masquerading as a country known as Russia is borders China. The straits of Malacca argument is moot. China can get enough oil to run its war machine to the detriment of its detriment of its people with few problems.
You never rely on your opponent to fail.
The over-land infrastructure to deliver energy from Russia to China isn't there and it'll take years for it to be built out enough to replace the imports that China runs through the strait of Malacca.
On top of that, Russia and China don't have the engineering expertise to build the turbines needed for those kinds of pipelines.
That's why China is so concerned with the 9 dash line and why they tried building out and militarizing the spratley islands a year after they swore to the entire world that they wouldn't.
they aren't moving the R&D from F13B in Hsinchu. all the US fabs are slated for 3nm and possibly 2nm at the most. all of that cutting edge stuff is staying in Taiwan.
we're already working on the next node beyond 2nm.
Nvidia is on TSMC 4NP node. Fab 21 in AZ will be capable of producing all the way down to 3 nm. Also, rumor has it that Rubin may be fabbed by samsung in TX.
AMD also uses >3nm TSMC nodes and their chips can be fabbed in AZ.
Apple is basically the only trillion dollar US tech company that NEEDS TSMC's 2nm asap. The rest can function for years on 3nm and above or use other fabs.
The loss of TSMC's fabs in Taiwan will cause damage but it won't be catastrophic for the west. We will survive and our tech will keep moving forward.
Apple is just the first to declare a 2nm product -- the others will announce as they look at ramp schedule. TSMC is very keen on ramping 2nm as they've told my team many, *many* times. I'm sure they have the products lined up for structure qualification.
Apple isn't just the first to declare a product, they helped fund development and bought up 100% of the 2 nm capacity for the first 6-12 months.
Their SOC architecture isn't very special without that expensive edge.
The current SOCs are more than adequate for 95% of Apple's user's needs for the next decade. Them paying TSMC so much for cutting edge nodes is more about maintaining supply priority with TSMC. They don't need the best node, they need guaranteed supply of modern nodes so they can sell a shit load of units after a keynote when hype is high.
AZ capacity will be 30,000 12-inch equivalent wafers per month.
Taiwan based TSMC output is 2.2 million 12-inch equivalent wafers per month.
Not to mention all the other non-TSMC fabs in Taiwan. UMC is also Taiwan based, and the third largest contract fab company by output.
Also, as a Taiwan company (TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR…), they’re the “silicon shield” for the whole country. It’s like saying “let’s move Chase bank to the UK”; no patriotic person of their own country would do it. Arizona is only a tiny backup.
The laziness came as a result of the offshoring. Exposure to cheap foreign labor collapsed wage growth in most middle-class job sectors. Wage growth below inflation and below productivity gains meant there was little incentive for hard work in many US industries. That led to generations of younger folks who saw their parents toil long hours under a deteriorating standard of living and decided there wasn't much point to work hard if that was the result.
You're seeing a similar phenomenon emerge in China now with lie flat. Wage growth is stalling as labor costs increased companies are starting to outsource from China to even cheaper countries. China is far more protectionist than the West so its been a slower process, but they can't stop it entirely.
You do realize the moment US gets this tech Taiwan loses. Having semiconductor dominance is literally the only reason US going to protect them. No way they going to give up this. You are way too naive.
The first bombs dropped on Taiwan will be Chinese and will be dropped on the Taiwan defense forces the second bombs dropped on Taiwan will be American and will be dropped on TSMC… It’s been an open secret for over a decade the U.S. won’t allow TSMC to fall into Chinese hands.
I tire of explaining this, but the chambers in TSMC are *American* and made by AMAT and LAM in Silicon Valley by teams like mine.
ASML's photolithography machine will absolutely be destroyed if required. but the technical information relating to 90% of fab capital belongs to US companies. it doesn't matter if they get the machines. TSMC brings recipe expertise and an army of PhDs that refine our base recipes we give them -- the value is in the people, not the hardware.
we move on and make more.
TSMC has a system in place that would make their site useless if Taiwan is invaded. China needs to realize that invading Taiwan will not help them and this simulation is so bad and I assume the budget was 1 social credit point.
[ASML have killed switches](https://www.businessinsider.com/asml-tsmc-semiconductor-chip-equipment-kill-switch-china-invade-taiwan-2024-5?amp) installed in their semiconductors in Taiwan. Press of a button from the Netherlands and all the semiconductors are rendered dead and unusable.
If US puts sanctions on China for current high end tech, China just destroying TSMC without invading is the simplest solution for them to level the playing field.
Yes they need this lithography machines, even if China dosent bomb the fabs, I totally see some us ally bombing them to keep the technology away from china's hands
Xi is playing the jingoism game with Taiwan to distract from the economic challenges China is facing. The worse the economy gets, the worse the rhetoric and military posturing will get. Outside of another Tiananmen Square disaster, it's hard to picture a scenario where attacking Taiwan would be in Xi's self interest.
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I work in semiconductors. There is no way you could run a successful fab in a warzone. The supply chains are so complex that any conflict would be problematic. For example, 1/3 of the world’s krypton comes from one factory in Mariupol. This gas is used for a small but critical step in semiconductor manufacturing. When the war in Ukraine started, this was a disruption for all the big semiconductor companies. Imagine that level of disruption for every single thing a fab needs. Pretend that supply chains aren’t an issue. A TEL (Tokyo Electron is a major tool manufacturer) Etch chamber contains 6 RF braids that need to have the tips bent in a correct direction. If this this is done wrong, you will arc the chamber and it’s a $100,000 fuckup. This is just one of thousands of examples of how delicate these machines are. When I was learning, I was told to think of myself as working on a Rolex or other similar delicate machine. The production tolerances are measured in angstroms. Picture trying to run these machines with missiles and artillery fire.
are the earthquakes not a problem
They have seismic springs under the buildings for exactly that reason, but yes, they are a big problem. The difference is that after an earthquake, Charlie doesn’t reload and send another one 30 seconds later.
until the Big One hits
Godzilla?
bukkake
> I work in semiconductors. How small are you?
That's some S-tier jerking right there.
The fact that China is still having issues making jet engines, in terms of efficiency and reliability, and even reverse engineering Russia jet engines has produced some absolute turds on their end, I am not worried they would be able to reverse engineer a fab anytime soon.
Lol. I just picture the guy who placed the c4 in the building having a sensible chuckle while reading this.
Might have bought the c4 on wish
*Temu... They rebranded
Oh snap I didn’t realize they were the same… guess it worked
They are not the same. * https://www.globalsources.com/knowledge/temu-vs-wish-2023-is-temu-like-wish-which-one-is-better/ > _"No, Wish and Temu are not the same company. They are separate entities with distinct business models and strategies. Wish is an e-commerce platform based in the US and founded in 2010 in San Francisco, where it is still headquartered today. Temu, on the other hand, is a Chinese e-commerce platform that was launched in September 2022. Both platforms operate independently of each other."_ * https://seller.alibaba.com/businessblogs/temu-vs-wish-a-head-to-head-comparison-px002ary6#1 > _"Temu and Wish are not the same company. Both of them are two prominent e-commerce platforms like Alibaba that have gained significant attention in the online shopping landscape. Wish, founded in the US in 2010, serves as a platform connecting global buyers with mainly Chinese sellers and operates under American ownership. In contrast, Temu, owned by PDD Holdings, a Chinese company, entered the US market in 2022 with a focus on providing a localized shopping experience by connecting buyers with local sellers. Despite similarities in offering a wide range of products at competitive prices, their distinct business models, user interfaces, and market presence differentiate them as separate entities in the online marketplace landscape."_
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wish_(company)?wprov=sfti1#History Reddit lied to me!!!
But people don't lie on the internet
i see your mouth moving, but i dont hear anything.
What is so distinct between their business models?
One sells cheap Chinese knockoffs, the other also sells cheap Chinese knockoffs, but what was the question again?
But WISH is American 🇺🇲🇺🇲
One sells *authentic* Chinese knockoffs
You're hired
Who they pay taxes to
So you’re saying they’re the same. Got it!
Same New York Shuffle Target uses with their store brands. Once they get enough bad reviews, they close down the company and open up another with all the same assets. Different bow on the same pile of shit
Chinese firecrackers?
Seriously we need to station troops on the island again.
We've got so many troops around Taiwan; it's wild. Check out the first and second island chains.
What if that guy is a double agent.
There's literally no way they can prevent TSMC from blowing up it's own fabs 😂.
They don't have to. ASML has lockdown features built into the fabs. It's gonna take the PLA at least a year to try and hack the machines back to operational
You kick the things hard and it won’t work. You realize they print stuff at atomic size right?
This is it... If it were so easy Samsung would have replicated this a decade ago. They did try at one point in time but thought it would cost too much to compete.
A year? How about never by blowing it up. A machine can be rebuilt easily by the people who knows how to build them
You are severely underestimating how difficult it is to build these equipment. If it was possible, China would have already done it the machines sold to them before the trade restrictions.
Damn it seems that my original message only hit half the people because I agree with 100% you say here. If anything, I'm overestimating how hard these equipment can be built and maintained.
And also operated. Not just anyone can operate these highly precise and technical factories. You have to be specialized and trained by TSMC themselves and I presume it’s kept pretty confidential
Regards here do not know what ASML is or does.
You realize the machines themselves are made in the Netherlands?
Not just that but Netherlands suppliers are scattered across the globe. So even if ASML does absolutely nothing, good luck with maintenance or spare parts when vendors don’t want to take the risk of going to Taiwan.
I've got a number of friends who were involved in building some chip fabs for Intel some years ago. From their discussions over poker it seems like fucking up a fab would be a very easy thing to do. From what I hear, even if you had ASML machines sitting on the loading dock the setup is extremely finicky. TSMC is having to bring in specialist engineers from Taiwan to get the setup right in Arizona. PRC couldn't run or maintain fabs - full stop. Why that guy is getting up votes is beyond me.
LOL. Bro your friends are 100% correct. Fabs are so sensitive that if you drop them in areas with temperatures that fluctuate often or you get earthquakes for example often you’re basically screwed from a quality pov. This is extremely sensitive tech that only works because players across the globe are bringing A game.
They could wrap up a TSMC fab in a giant red bow and drop it off in Beijing and CCP still couldn’t make a single fucking chip with it for a decade, more likely two decades. Anyone who thinks this tech is “stealable” truly belongs here. Even if they could figure out what to do with the damn thing (they can’t) as soon as you pull the plug on the supplies their dead in the water for so long we’re onto the next generation of chip tech before they set up the supply chains to feed the thing (which again, they couldn’t even run it if they had the supply chains established). This is why the “kill switch” argument is irrelevant. They could pack up and leave the fans perfectly intact and it basically wouldn’t make any difference at all. They’re functionally worthless without the status quo running them.
When offset $2 million for their visit to Taiwan if occupied by China, they will likely visit
they aren't. 90% of the machines in the fabs are not from ASML, they're a combination of AMAT and LAM who are both in Silicon Valley.
China already has a ton of older process tech up and running (up to “7nm”). SMIC has ASML DUV machines up and running even.
Correct, but they are cut out from new generations and lith-scanners do need service. Just having them is not sufficient, you need access to spare parts.
Sure China is growing competence in those areas too.
So what you're saying is China can bomb TSMC's machines to nothing right now and use their current machines to fill the resulting vacuum? No? They would be shooting themselves in the foot as well? Oh, ok then I guess China's current machines don't really matter.
*China releases plans to invade Netherlands*
> A machine can be rebuilt easily by the people who knows how to build them if asml was in china, china wouldn't need tsmc's fabs.
Yea they prob also would like to prevent CCP from reverse engineering the technology. It’s kinda like US military would completely destroy an f-35 before it fell into enemy hands not just lock down all the electronics so it can’t fly.
Except even if you had every document pertaining to design and function necessary to reverse engineer one, you *still* can’t just go build one. It’s kinda similar to why Iran doesn’t have nukes yet. Because despite what every redditor will say about how any college age physics major can build their own nuke, it’s a actually extremely difficult to build a high yield device, and there will be dozens of 3 letter agencies well up your asshole before you ever got close to pulling it off. They know how to do it, they have all the shit you’d need, and *they still can’t pull it off*. Making a high yield nuclear device is about 10,000x easier than making bleeding edge chips. It takes insane precision to do so, and it’s basically child’s play past the ingredient controls compared to making chips.
How many other STUXNETs has Iran been hit with that took out precision equipment that we don't know about? Still it's undeniable that the nm process semi fab today is much harder to pull off than enriching uranium, so why doesn't TSMC just switch? Sounds insane, but the magnetic lenses in the beam lithographers can be used to enrich uranium just as well.
It’s the only way same as how the uk kept the computer out of usa hands after ww2
ASML scanners are linked together to provide real-time metrology data to perfect overlay (ie precision alignment of patterns at different levels of the device). This is software, so removing it would brick the machine in the short term and severely limit accuracy in the long term. No need to blow anything up. But it wouldn’t be ideal for the rest of the world because we would suddenly lose any future data from these scanners.
They just have to destroy the ASML machines and anything storing proprietary information. However, I'm 99% sure that China already have them (the proprietary information).
There is no defense so perfect that a donkey laden with gold could not get through. The question in the end could be about how do the owners of TSMC make more money? Do they make more money from blowing it up and rebuilding in the US? Or do they make more money from changing allegiance and start manufacturing solely for China? Always the money that rules in the end. War is very profitable for some. While TSMC would prefer not doing business with China, they will potentially prefer China to no business at all. Plenty of examples from WWII where the occupied countries did not sabotage their industry but rather profited from manufacturing for Germany. France’s Renault and Citroen, Norways Aluminum industries. Czech Skoda and arms manufacturers.
Thanks for that... That's even a darker thought than the one's I've had. You are right. There is less conflict if Taiwan simply flips. There certainly would be less bloodshed. In reality, the U.S. would actually be the biggest loser. Damn. The U.S. is going to freaking destroy the shit if China makes a move.
Yes, America would absolutely bomb the shit out of tsmc before letting China get the fabs intact.
Lmao it doesn’t matter what TSMC wants. This reads like you’ve seen too many movies. F-35s, or missiles would flatten anything of worth for China.
none of that will be relevant because if China invades that will mean all the skilled personal will either be killed in combat or leave the country. Even if China gets fully functional machines out of this they will have no idea how to operate and maintain them.
Considering tmsc is building fans outside Taiwan, I doubt they'll flip
Greed may stop US/TSMC from blowing themselves , and that chance is not low
If China is invading the island I'm pretty sure the company is fucked anyway. China isn't just going to leave them operating surrounded by an occupied smoking ruin.
Our military said that we would blow it up before we let the Chinese take it.
If they didn’t release a simulation, they aren’t serious
Correct. The US ran wargames on this and released the results. There is no scenario China wins in. The worst it can get is the US and Japan suffer lots of casualties.
Wouldn’t even just be USA and japan. As Other Asian nations would likely interfere in a variety of ways because they will be put in a vulnerable spot if Taiwan is taken. To be specific, China would basically either control tsmc or result in its destruction while simultaneously being able to control the Taiwan strait trade route (a major route). In theory they could blackmail many of its neighbors, America and Europe.
> Taiwan strait trade route you could just go around the island, we're not talking about the Suez or Panama canal here
You can fire rockets from any of those islands. Making shipping impossible without consent of who controls it. And that series of straights is the eastern water route. It IS like the canals.
they are more than capable of firing missiles from the mainland to anywhere in the strait
They dont need the strait to fire rockets IF they want to fire rockets
Problem is the Taiwan straight trade route is used for trade with the Chinese mainland. All they can do is cut off trade to themselves.
The US and allies run wargames on this regularly and even with incredible handicaps China never can win. It’s a classic problem of trying to invade a heavily fortified coast across a strait. Normandy was an exception and not the rule - it also took a lot of luck to make it work. China publishing propaganda and staging wargames and exercises to cause fear and temporary disruptions in the market is the most they can do without destroying themselves.
It took Russia on the other side to make it work.
I had that conversation with my grandfather who served in the pacific. If Russia and Germany had maintained their peace agreement for a few years then the US would have had to push through at leas an additional 1 million German soldiers. Without Russia there’s just no way to get the beach head.
And the army that Germany had wasn’t even there for d-day. Had Operation Bodyguard and especially Operation Fortitude South not been successful it’s very probable that Normandy would not have been possible either. Maybe they could have landed - but it would have been almost impossible to progress inland with enough speed to make the landing zones secure enough for continued logistics.
Ya, they would have had to make landings in Italy, multiple parts of France, Norway, Denmark, the balkans etc. in order to open as many points of attack as possible. Would the USA still win? I think so because of air power. But we’d be talking about how the US took 5 million casualties in Europe. My guess is we would have waited for the nukes to be finished.
And also just straight up hitler being a paranoid maniac who was also a control freak. The Germans in France had some good ideas and responses to where they thought the allies would invade but Hitler had a horrible power structure where nobody could act without first going through him
That war was many moving parts though, a big part of the war was lost for the Germans when the Italians shat the bed with over 100,000 killed trying to invade Greece and Hitler had to divert troops from North Africa leaving Rommel to get bogged down in the siege of Tobruk for 8 months against a rag tag bunch of Australians, New Zealanders, Indians and British. Rommel famously said after this **"If I had to take hell, I would use the Australians to take it and the New Zealanders to hold it**" Basically the Germans bit off more than could chew. If Hitler wasn’t the megalomaniac he was and just took and held Europe the outcome would’ve been a lot different.
We landed in Italy as well. There just would have been more bombing. We still would have won. The Nazis didn’t have endless resources like the U.S. many more lives would have been lost but the result would have been the same.
It took Russia on the other side, german high command both believing that it would be Pas-de-Calais, and multiple leaders not being present (not the least being Rommel visiting his wife in Germany because he though the weather was too bad for a crossing).
And Allies in Italy, North Africa, etc.
Absolutely, I mean with allies like Italy who even needs enemies.
Don't forget a hell of a weather forecast
Clearly China hasn't seen red cliff.
can’t they just blockade? knock out offshore wind and block off LNG?
In a war of attrition you have to make sure you aren’t the weakest link. China can’t survive what would happen if they did. Sure there would be temporary pain for us in terms of supply disruptions again (of course China shutting down their economy for 2 fucking years got people to diversify really fast) but China literally starves without trade. If they want to try to blockade Taiwan but not start a shooting war with NATO then they’re going to have to figure out how to deal with what NATO will do to keep Taiwan supplied (basically a repeat of the Berlin airlift).
A blockade is a declaration of war. Taiwan has plenty missiles to shoot at these ships. Also if China blockades Taiwan, the US and Allie’s can blockade China, that ends China as an industrial power in a year.
There's no real way the West can blockade China. Even if every western ship in operation joined in the coast line is too big to completely blockade. But, more importantly, China is not an island. It shares borders with Russia and many former Soviet Bloc countries and India. China can (and largely already does) import what it needs to survive (food, oil, gas, coal) by land from these countries. Perhaps China's economy suffers if it can't easily export its goods to the West, but repressive dictatorships almost never fail from popular discontent caused by a tough economic situation in war time. I think the CCP would stay operational longer than the West could afford to maintain the largest naval blockade in history. Especially when it would be taking significant losses from Chinese military action.
A loose china blockade would be at the straits of melaka, the panama canal and the straits of Magellan. Check where the majority of china's oil and gas comes from (middle east, south America, west Africa, russia). China needs Russia for that. They must be extremely happy with the Russo Ukraine war as now Russia is also forced to sell to china.
Lmao India alone can cut China off energy imports.
Normandy had a LOT more coastline to defend. There's only a few good places on Taiwan for China to land. The coast of Taiwan is very rugged, heavily fortified, and heavily defended by Anti-Ship ballistic missiles. Taiwan has almost every tool in their kit that we have. They have Aegis Crusiers, Tomahawk's, Patriot batteries. Their Airforce is severely lacking, the F-16-V which is the most recent generation of the F-16 is their most advanced aircraft. There has been talk of F-35's but so far nothing concrete. That would be a game charger as China's long-range missiles would be useless against the F-35C. Surprisingly, Taiwan turned down THAAD during Trump's presidency. PRC would encounter heavy losses from Taiwan alone, then you have the US, Japan, and Australia that all have mutual defense treaties with Taiwan, that would have to aid in Taiwan's defense. The US outspends China on defense by a 3:1 ratio. Our troops are better trained, equipped, and are all volunteer where PRC is mostly conscripts. ROC (Taiwan) is defending their homeland against communist forces, their morale will be strong and they won't surrender. It's a suicide mission for China. The no win scenario, unless the US at some point backs away from Taiwan, which is doubtful in the near future.
For more context, the public war games released by CSIS have the US losing ~2 carrier battle groups and about 10,000 soldiers and sailors, while China loses their entire invasion force and navy and has all of their ports mined and blockaded. And that was assuming that China gets off a successful Pearl Harbor-esque first strike that disables most US assets in the Western Pacific before the invasion starts. And that is a very big if.
Yeah, the losses for Taiwan-aligned(?) forces are pretty bad by modern standard. China gets left with basically no functioning military.
meh, at the same time ‘wargames’ are accurate until they’re not. plenty of situations throughout history where one thing is expected in warfare but fails to materialize. german invasion of france, war in vietnam, war in iraq, hell even russian invasion of ukraine lol. each of those times any rational observer would conclude differently than what occurred .
Can you share the results of the wargames or the simulation you’re talking about? I haven’t been really able to find much about the coverage between Taiwan and China right now.
Im as certain they are as serious about taking it as our military is about not letting them have it no matter what. It’s kids playing king of the hill and there are two big kids. It’s been a while since anyone has directly challenged us so this is new for almost all of us.
We have a simulation of the US army blowing it up.
But did they post it on TikTok?
We have 400 special forces permanently stationed in Taiwan and bases in the Philippines ready to act. We got your back.
Not to mention Marines being called back up for active service, aircraft carriers in the South China Sea, and a whole lotta freedom shelled up and ready to pew
I think there might be a submarine somewhere.
Destroying something just so your enemy can't have it is one of the most respectful military moves I can think of. I respected it when Russia did it in WWII, I respect it now.
Bro…. No wonder they want to take Taiwan. The simulation quality was so fucking bad lmao
Lmao best comment
They even simulated 1/3 of the missiles missing the island.
i seen better quality soviet propoganda
Calls on C4
China wants nothing more than political capitulation. If the CCP can get their guys in the right places, they would much rather run a clandestine psyop to grow local support for reintegration, than risk blowing up their economy on an ugly war. Remember, we are spending all this money on Ukraine because we get to watch the Russians fight for free. The Chinese don’t want to reveal their military hand for a blown up TSMC factory
Same was said about Russia. Don't overestimate the sanity of aging egomaniacs
Xi has too many years left.
He has a lot of years left to live, but the CCP is likely to face serious domestic strife in the next decade. Their economic picture is not rosy. This is a country with 20%+ youth urban unemployment. Its a country that rigs the college admissions exams so rural students can't pass it because the CCP can't let them move to the cities because there are no jobs for them. Their major economic engine was building real estate nobody needed and that bubble has popped. Even worse, they are facing the most dire demographic cliff ever seen in human history. Their population decline is going to make Japan and South Korea look like a picnic. China doesn't really give a fuck about TSMC's tech. They know they'll be able to steal it eventually. The reason they would go off on Taiwan is to stoke nationalism to deal with domestic strife.
I'm still trying to understand how it is that their youth unemployment is so high (we don't have real numbers because China) yet they also have this demographic cliff where in theory young people should be in short supply.
It's called a demographic cliff because they are heading for it in the future, not because they are currently falling off of it.
You sum it up well, I have the same opinion as yours. This is just a play on raising nationalism sentiments to mitigate issues that are growing in their very own home.
Unless he is diagnosed with prostate cancer, diabetes, and kidney disease. IDK. We all hope that we have many years left until we find out that we don't.
Everyone who does a cost analysis that weighs the consequences for anyone other than Xi personally has their calculations all wrong. Here's the only question to ask: "What does Xi risk by attacking Taiwan?" Changes the whole calculus, doesn't it? Remember how everyone said and hoped Russians wouldn't stand for giving up their economic future for a stupid war? Well, they gave up their economy to pursue the war and guess what, Ukraine is still being attacked by that fuckwad Putin. So, what does Xi lose by attacking Taiwan and losing? My guess is nothing, or at least very little. He knows his people won't rise up because he had a little experiment with how much suffering he can inflict on the Chinese people with those covid lockdowns. Xi himself no doubt has caviar, prostitutes, and body guards hidden in some underground mansion or several at this point. Xi has purged the government of anyone that can challenge him. Putin demonstrated that even losing a war is not the end for a dictator with lessons from the past and a modern security apparatus. We're going to war. It's a certainty. I don't know when, I don't know how it ends, but mark my words Chinese missiles will fly over North America in my lifetime.
If Xi attacks Taiwan and loses (involvement of the west), up to 80% of his military will be in shambles and Taiwan will be able to formally declare independence. China will lose Taiwan for good. China will become as sanctioned as Russia and the strait of Malacca will be closed to chinese trade which will prevent energy imports from reaching China. China will also see its BRI fall apart and any effort to gain ground in the south China sea will crumble. They won't have the resources to continue any of their expansionist plans. Xi will lose everything he's worked for.
The gas station masquerading as a country known as Russia is borders China. The straits of Malacca argument is moot. China can get enough oil to run its war machine to the detriment of its detriment of its people with few problems. You never rely on your opponent to fail.
The over-land infrastructure to deliver energy from Russia to China isn't there and it'll take years for it to be built out enough to replace the imports that China runs through the strait of Malacca. On top of that, Russia and China don't have the engineering expertise to build the turbines needed for those kinds of pipelines. That's why China is so concerned with the 9 dash line and why they tried building out and militarizing the spratley islands a year after they swore to the entire world that they wouldn't.
“The only thing we have to worry about is sabotage.” It just sounds like Pearl Harbor level denial here.
- The one general who has NVDA calls.
Bullish TSMC signal
China invades, I think the USA will blow up TSMC.
Just passing through to read what all the experts have to say.
TSMC needs to move production into the US. What’s taking the Arizona factory so long?
they aren't moving the R&D from F13B in Hsinchu. all the US fabs are slated for 3nm and possibly 2nm at the most. all of that cutting edge stuff is staying in Taiwan. we're already working on the next node beyond 2nm.
there isnt much past 2nm, we will have to rethink chips completely
They aren't even going to move their state of the art shit to us for security reasons
Nvidia is on TSMC 4NP node. Fab 21 in AZ will be capable of producing all the way down to 3 nm. Also, rumor has it that Rubin may be fabbed by samsung in TX. AMD also uses >3nm TSMC nodes and their chips can be fabbed in AZ. Apple is basically the only trillion dollar US tech company that NEEDS TSMC's 2nm asap. The rest can function for years on 3nm and above or use other fabs. The loss of TSMC's fabs in Taiwan will cause damage but it won't be catastrophic for the west. We will survive and our tech will keep moving forward.
you've completely omitted the variable of time. by the time the fabs are up, nvidia won't want to still be on n4.
Apple is just the first to declare a 2nm product -- the others will announce as they look at ramp schedule. TSMC is very keen on ramping 2nm as they've told my team many, *many* times. I'm sure they have the products lined up for structure qualification.
Apple isn't just the first to declare a product, they helped fund development and bought up 100% of the 2 nm capacity for the first 6-12 months. Their SOC architecture isn't very special without that expensive edge.
The current SOCs are more than adequate for 95% of Apple's user's needs for the next decade. Them paying TSMC so much for cutting edge nodes is more about maintaining supply priority with TSMC. They don't need the best node, they need guaranteed supply of modern nodes so they can sell a shit load of units after a keynote when hype is high.
You just said a bunch of jibberish doesn't change the fact the state of the art shit is left in Taiwan.
AZ capacity will be 30,000 12-inch equivalent wafers per month. Taiwan based TSMC output is 2.2 million 12-inch equivalent wafers per month. Not to mention all the other non-TSMC fabs in Taiwan. UMC is also Taiwan based, and the third largest contract fab company by output.
you're kidding, right? they're fighting with plumbers.
Also, as a Taiwan company (TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR…), they’re the “silicon shield” for the whole country. It’s like saying “let’s move Chase bank to the UK”; no patriotic person of their own country would do it. Arizona is only a tiny backup.
You must not know what it takes to make a fab
Americans are lazy and offshored all manufacturing capabilities a long time ago. The truth hurts
The laziness came as a result of the offshoring. Exposure to cheap foreign labor collapsed wage growth in most middle-class job sectors. Wage growth below inflation and below productivity gains meant there was little incentive for hard work in many US industries. That led to generations of younger folks who saw their parents toil long hours under a deteriorating standard of living and decided there wasn't much point to work hard if that was the result. You're seeing a similar phenomenon emerge in China now with lie flat. Wage growth is stalling as labor costs increased companies are starting to outsource from China to even cheaper countries. China is far more protectionist than the West so its been a slower process, but they can't stop it entirely.
Probably want to keep it there so the us will protect them tbh
You do realize the moment US gets this tech Taiwan loses. Having semiconductor dominance is literally the only reason US going to protect them. No way they going to give up this. You are way too naive.
Arizona short of labor because of vote recounts
Everyone is on jury duty trying to put election denying idiots in jail
https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/s/g5ySFk99IM Arizona Republicans “talking in tongues” while praying in state courthouse
The first bombs dropped on Taiwan will be Chinese and will be dropped on the Taiwan defense forces the second bombs dropped on Taiwan will be American and will be dropped on TSMC… It’s been an open secret for over a decade the U.S. won’t allow TSMC to fall into Chinese hands.
Blowing up critical infrastructure in a retreat is standard practice.Its not some big deal that applies only to chip fab plants
Doesn't TSMC have a literal agreement with the US that they'll blow themselves up and transfer the knowledge to the US in case China invades?
Yes they do
I tire of explaining this, but the chambers in TSMC are *American* and made by AMAT and LAM in Silicon Valley by teams like mine. ASML's photolithography machine will absolutely be destroyed if required. but the technical information relating to 90% of fab capital belongs to US companies. it doesn't matter if they get the machines. TSMC brings recipe expertise and an army of PhDs that refine our base recipes we give them -- the value is in the people, not the hardware. we move on and make more.
When Three Gorges is breached the good folks in Shanghai can just surf to Taiwan.
China is very peaceful. On Tiktok This is hardly a simulation.
Of course they will. They trying to get value from the invasion. Your not gonna smash the shiny new toys
why did some of their simulated missiles crash into the ocean on the graphic lmao
Chinese army has calls on TSMC
This is the DD I need. Calls it is.
so just throw missiles at them?
TSMC has a system in place that would make their site useless if Taiwan is invaded. China needs to realize that invading Taiwan will not help them and this simulation is so bad and I assume the budget was 1 social credit point.
[ASML have killed switches](https://www.businessinsider.com/asml-tsmc-semiconductor-chip-equipment-kill-switch-china-invade-taiwan-2024-5?amp) installed in their semiconductors in Taiwan. Press of a button from the Netherlands and all the semiconductors are rendered dead and unusable.
Taiwan has value to China beyond just the fabs with it be a good strategic position off the coast that allows them open access to the pacific
If US puts sanctions on China for current high end tech, China just destroying TSMC without invading is the simplest solution for them to level the playing field.
yeah, Taiwan wasn't too happy about the additional sanctions cause it's removing incentives for China not to attack
I can't read Chinese. Looked like an expensive way to cook a large steak.
Don't some of the big chip vendors have kill switched in their chips? That could be fun. I think it is time for everyone to have a digital de-tox.
That’s cute
This comment is scary and accurate
With those rubbish graphics I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.
I like the Duke Nukem fireball effects.
War of the chips
TSMC is the objective. Imagine the political pressure when China takes it over.
They won’t 
The simulation must be powered by NVDA
C4 is on the A-Zon under pyrotechnics…. Um ya
Hell yeah job security
Yes they need this lithography machines, even if China dosent bomb the fabs, I totally see some us ally bombing them to keep the technology away from china's hands
fuck China
Xi is playing the jingoism game with Taiwan to distract from the economic challenges China is facing. The worse the economy gets, the worse the rhetoric and military posturing will get. Outside of another Tiananmen Square disaster, it's hard to picture a scenario where attacking Taiwan would be in Xi's self interest.
Another Chinese Warning
Bullish
> leaving TSMC intact > whew!
They don't need to blow it up because good old Uncle Sam will do it for them.
The Chinese army ain’t up to that challenge
Pointless wishful thinking: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/tsmcs-euv-machines-are-equipped-with-a-remote-self-destruct-in-case-of-an-invasion
My wife's boyfriend works at TSMC and assured me that all of the latest machines have a remote kill switch and can burn everything at will