Still, even the thought of a collapse for chips is scary. I wonder if we can at least fallback to 80-s chips production in case of a supply chain collapse.
2011 https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1258963 " "This is an unfortunate coincidence where 90-100 percent of the world's supply of bismaleimide triazine is made in northeastern Japan,"
1993 https://apnews.com/8fe2925b68d34d33f19a53e4892c74a2 "epoxy resin has been the talk of the computer chip business for the past month after an explosion destroyed a Japanese factory that made 60 percent of the world’s supply."
> if we can at least fallback to 80-s chips production in case of a supply chain collapse.
Not literally, most of the 80s US chip manufacturing sites are Superfund sites now.
https://www.sciencealert.com/vintage-vacuum-tube-tech-could-...
Also regular vacuum tubes are still pretty competent for power applications.
Making a switching power supply might be a challenge though - we would have to return to using Thyratrons which contain mercury vapour.
Power diodes are not going to be a problem, they are a comparatively crude device from the 50s.
https://news.metal.com/newscontent/100885469/Supply-shortage...
https://news.metal.com/newscontent/100937313/medium-heavy-ra...
Articles like this belong in a "manufactured crisis" category. Very little in it is false per se, but the overall impression it creates is misleading, and is likely to be driven by either nationalism trying to upsell conflict with China, or miners trying to sell investments outside of China that are currently uncompetitive.