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Re:ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory by colechristensen on Monday January 03, 2022 @09:11PM (#29790329)
>Is impacting the semi supply chain the hot, new weapon of the US-China tech cold war?

If it is, at best only temporarily. The US is perfectly capable of setting up its own complete supply chain if there were the political motivation and do so in a relatively short time frame. China is perfectly aware of this so it will never become a serious issue, they would just be shooting themselves in the foot and cutting themselves off from our (sometimes unwilling) technology transfer.

Re:ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory by tux3 on Monday January 03, 2022 @09:27PM (#29790480)
There is absolutely no capacity to replace ASML on any sort of short timeframe.

EUV step and scan systems are roughly the size of a bus, fractal system complexity and sophistication that rivals the LHC, and mirrors with a roughness two orders of magnitude finer than what the JWST space telescope has to work with (namely .2nm compared to 20nm).

Please do not underestimate the difficulty of manufacturing EUV systems, ASML only manages to build a few dozen a year for a reason :)

Re:ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory by colechristensen on Monday January 03, 2022 @09:46PM (#29790637)
If the DoD got scared and threw a few billion at a competition to build this tech locally, I’m betting it could be done relatively quickly, but then what is and is not “quick”

Just call the three or four companies you think would be the closest and tell them they’ll be competing to build the capacity paid for by the defense department.

Re:ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory by tux3 on Monday January 03, 2022 @09:53PM (#29790703)
If you don't have the right people and the right environment, throwing more money at a problem can be enormously inefficient, it doesn't solve every problem.

There are many example of big government funded projects that crumble under their own weight, despite being inundated with cash. Look at NASA's SLS, the DoD's trillion dollar plane projects, big government software projects in general.

For truly large, complex systems, it's not enough to throw more money at the problem. You need an organization that can manage the complexity in the first place, otherwise you can spend as many years and trillions as you want with little to show for it.

Re:ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory by ClumsyPilot on Monday January 03, 2022 @10:16PM (#29790858)
You know, expertise does not grow on trees. It was not an accident the manhattan project and moon landings were led by specialists from Germany.

You can't suddenly create experts by throwing money at random business people.

Re:ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory by jazzyjackson on Monday January 03, 2022 @10:00PM (#29790756)
What if everyone who knows how already works for ASML? Then starting up a competing corporation and sniping talent would actually slow down recovery. I'm sure the cost-benefit-analysis has already been done.
Re:ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory by barkingcat on Monday January 03, 2022 @10:00PM (#29790755)
to be honest, high level semiconductor lithography would be similar to manhattan project complexity. It could be done, but there's a reason nobody but ASML makes these.
Re:ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory by quickthrowman on Monday January 03, 2022 @11:22PM (#29791284)
I don’t think you understand, ASML does not have any competitors at its level. They are alone on the bleeding edge of semiconductor tooling.

If all it took was a few billion dollars, don’t you think someone would have already funded it and started a profitable company?

Re:ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory by oneplane on Wednesday January 05, 2022 @10:43AM (#29810344)
Perhaps you should read the mythical man-month. Throwing resources at the problem doesn't suddenly make it go away in knowledge cases.
Re:ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory by oneplane on Monday January 03, 2022 @09:20PM (#29790406)
The US is capable of many things, in theory. In practise, not a lot of new capabilities have materialised so far. Not even a single new Foxconn plant or a domestic contender (if any).

That's not to say that is impossible, but without good examples we can all say a bunch of stuff and it won't mean anything.

Re:ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory by colechristensen on Monday January 03, 2022 @09:22PM (#29790424)
There's a difference between what happens for economic reasons and what would happen for an actual security / supply chain threat.
Re:ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory by oneplane on Monday January 03, 2022 @09:23PM (#29790436)
> That's not to say that is impossible, but without good examples we can all say a bunch of stuff and it won't mean anything.
Re:ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory by colechristensen on Monday January 03, 2022 @09:32PM (#29790522)
Ok, in WWII a big part of Allied victory was the US mobilizing a vertically integrated industrial base to build war materiel.

You can look at the history of the Defense Production Act (1950) to see it in action several times building up local industries with lots of cheap money.

Re:ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory by ianai on Monday January 03, 2022 @09:47PM (#29790647)
Right, if the US wanted it done it could be done.
Re:ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory by lotsofpulp on Monday January 03, 2022 @10:11PM (#29790831)
Is there a reason to assume the ability to ramp up in WW2 has any bearing on the ability to ramp up an operation like ASML today?

You cannot just throw any bodies at a problem like creating ASML. You have to throw very specific bodies with each one having at least a decade or more of very specific expertise (it seems like, based on the comments and articles I have read). That is just ASML, not even getting into the deep expertise TSMC must need to execute, or even Apple in designing.

Knowledge itself has expanded tremendously since WW2 such that to be top of the field in WW2 required much less time than to be top of the field today.

Re:ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory by AnimalMuppet on Monday January 03, 2022 @10:49PM (#29791082)
Manhattan Project? That wasn't a "just throw bodies at it" either...
Re:ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory by ianai on Tuesday January 04, 2022 @02:56AM (#29792468)
For numbers of grads in engineering I found this (2017/2018 data, please forgive poor copy/paste from pdf ): https://ira.asee.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/2018-Enginee...

“””

bachElor’s EnrollmEnt and dEgrEEs Enrollment in undergraduate engineering programs increased this year continuing a decade long trend to 622,502 full-time students in 2018. Degrees awarded increased to 131,937 for reporting institutions (136, 233 including non- reporting institutions). The three engineering disciplines producing the most degrees in 2018 were, as in 2017, mechanical engineering, with 31,936 degrees, computer science (inside engineering) with 19,082 degrees and electrical engineering with 13,767.

mastEr’s EnrollmEnt and dEgrEEs There was an increase in 2018 in enrollment in master’s engineering programs with a total of 93,559 students enrolled, a 6,687 student increase over 2017. The number of master’s degrees awarded increased to 66,340‬ for 2018. The three disciplines representing 39% of all engineering master’s graduates are computer science (inside engineering), with 10,946 graduates, mechanical engineering with 8,160 graduates and electrical engineering with 7,048 graduates.

doctoral EnrollmEnt and dEgrEEs In 2018 there were 12,156 doctorates awarded 78,715 full-time students enrolled in doctoral programs. The 5 disciplines with a combined total of 60% of the doctoral graduates in 2018 are mechanical, electrical/computer engineering, electrical engineering, chemical engineering and computer science (inside engineering

“””

Re:ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory by Jensson on Tuesday January 04, 2022 @02:48AM (#29792432)
Soviet also managed that, large state sanctioned projects can accomplish some feats but not others. Soviet did nuclear, soviet went to space, so those are examples of what states can do. However soviet tried to make good computers, but they failed to do so, so for all we know large state sanctioned efforts cannot solve this problem, so it looks like you need the agility of a free private sector to get through it.
Re:ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory by lotsofpulp on Tuesday January 04, 2022 @12:17AM (#29791675)
I do not know for sure, but I suspect blowing things up might be less difficult than creating and maintaining all the stable reactions needed to create a long lasting microchip. Nevertheless, even the Manhattan project took 5 or 6 years.
Re:ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory by dgfitz on Tuesday January 04, 2022 @01:20AM (#29791989)
Are you sure? They employed well over 100k people I thought, and maybe a handful of those people actually knew the full scope of the project.
Re:ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory by PKop on Tuesday January 04, 2022 @12:14AM (#29791650)
Do we have the same quality of human resources we had then?
Re:ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory by inglor_cz on Tuesday January 04, 2022 @04:05AM (#29792804)
Manhattan Project would have taken longer without input from all the European scientists chased out of Europe by Nazis.

Fermi, Teller, Bohr, von Neumann, Bethe, Szilard, Einstein - not every one of them was directly involved, but they all moved to America and taught younger generations of American physicists.

Re:ASML reports fire at its Berlin factory by ClumsyPilot on Monday January 03, 2022 @10:18PM (#29790872)
Do you have any evidence of required expertiese existing in US, youbare only offering tautologies so far