There's a difference between what happens for economic reasons and what would happen for an actual security / supply chain threat.

> 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.

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.

Right, if the US wanted it done it could be done.

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.

Manhattan Project? That wasn't a "just throw bodies at it" either...

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...

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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

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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.

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.

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.

Do we have the same quality of human resources we had then?

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.

Do you have any evidence of required expertiese existing in US, youbare only offering tautologies so far