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Re:National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence's... by simonh on Tuesday March 02, 2021 @06:00AM (#26313983)
I think looking at it as the USA 'falling behind in manufacturing' isn't quite the right lens to use when looking at the strategic issues here. I'm not saying you're wrong, I just want to tease out some of the issues and assumptions.

The strategic concern they are raising is not economic, it's a security issue and the two are quite different. From the strategic security view it doesn't matter so much who makes these products, what matters is ensuring continuity of availability on the one hand and excluding interference or compromises of the integrity of the supply chain on the other. The latter is to do with things like an opponent interfering in the quality of parts, introducing backdoors and such.

In these two views of course on shore manufacturing is easier to secure in both senses, but that's a side effect not an absolute. For example if the USA had sovereign territory next to China, a fab there would still be highly vulnerable to interference in the physical supply while a fab in Canada next to the US border would be much more physically secure from Chinese or Russian interference. From a security perspective there's nothing magical about being on US territory.

A lot of these debates seem to very rapidly pivot into discussions about on shore US manufacturing and falling behind technologically, where what they're really talking about is skills and economic benefits. Those are a very different issue though.

Even looking just at the technology it's not a simple calculation either. The best lithography systems are manufactured in Holland, any fab anywhere wanting to use the best processes is dependent on them and these are the most critical parts of the process. The location of the fab is just one part of the puzzle. In today's highly integrated world no one country can even hope to own all the essential elements in high tech supply, chain. The common simplistic view of iPhone manufacturing is another example of this. The majority of the most advanced components in an iPhone to this day aren't made in China. The camera module in Japanese, the CPUs come from Taiwan, flash memory and batteries mostly from South Korea and Japan I think, Gorilla glass I'm not sure about now, it used to be made in the US. Only final assembly and some low value components are Chinese, and yet iPhones are 'Made in China'. Would moving low value, low skilled final assembly really benefit the USA all that much? That's a more extreme example, but from a supply chain and technology point of view it's the same (to a much lesser extent to be sure) with chip fabs. Critical components come from all sorts of different countries and companies.

So ok building more advanced fabs in the US is a sensible move on a whole variety of axes, but it doesn't solve all of the problems and even when it does, it's not always for the most obvious reasons.

Re:National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence's... by NoOneNew on Tuesday March 02, 2021 @09:53AM (#26315899)
I really like your response and cant really argue with your points. I just want to add another aspect that I think you missed, the cultural mindset of the US.

Pre ww2 the US was pretty isolationist. A very, "Sounds like a whole lot of your problem and not mine" kind of country. The foot dragging for both world wars is pretty evident. I've read and personally do believe it's attributed by the fact we are a melting pot of people. That's important for the distinction of, "I left xyz country for a reason and came to this country to get away from their bullshit." That's a very toned down version of what my own dad told me on my 18th birthday when he gave me the full story of leaving soviet occupied Poland. I'm pretty sure theres a lot of grand amd great grand folks with similar sentiments when they left the old country in the late 1800s and early 1900s. People didnt uproot and enter a foreign land with no support just because they bored and doing well in their home country. This, I believe, leads to a self reliance mindset since there's a... disdain... for the rest of the world.

So the security aspect, absolutely. I think the want for all manufacturing in general stems from the self reliance, isolationist desire with security as a very good, logical excuse. However, even in bizarro world if a security argument wasn't good enough alone, this anti-global-reliance wouldn't go away.

Re:National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence's... by adamcstephens on Tuesday March 02, 2021 @07:22AM (#26314532)
Falling behind in manufacturing seems to include the entire supply chain, not just fabs. Global supply chains are fragile, so we’d do well to build as much physical infrastructure and expertise on shore as possible. This is a policy problem more than anything else.
Re:National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence's... by randcraw on Tuesday March 02, 2021 @10:21AM (#26316173)
The problem of US-based or ally-based technology companies that fall behind competitively or economically and then are allowed to fail inescapably ensures US dependence for essential/secure tech supplies on others, some with motives contrary to our well-being. This chink in our commercial, military, and security armor should wake the US government to the necessity of underwriting some essential industries, products, or services -- as China famously does.

The US gov't has underwritten a few niche industries for decades such as supercomputing (e.g. Cray and TMC) and crypto. But for some reason they've been reluctant to do this more broadly for other essential industries like microelectronics, telecom, battery tech, and more. Clearly the potential repercussions of such oversights should compel this laissez-faire policy to be reconsidered.

Re:National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence's... by simonh on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @11:23AM (#26330528)
Well as a citizen of a US ally (UK), that's all very well but I don't think the world works like that. Europe, Japan and other US allies are collectively huge pools of talent and capital. How much would the US government have to spend to guarantee than nothing thought up or developed in any of those countries ever exceeds anything developed in the US? Is that really a feasible objective?

Nobody in the US decided to let Holland develop more advanced lithographic systems for chip manufacturing, or to let ARM in the UK come up with a more efficient processor architecture.

Re:National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence's... by DataWorker on Tuesday March 02, 2021 @02:13PM (#26319137)
They fund the universities through debt in the form of student loans. The schools then funnel indebted graduates desperate for financial security into various industries where their human capital is securitized. You can call that laissez-faire, but I see a lot of similarities with China’s top down system and predict those similarities to increase as we are forced to compete with China more directly.