I wonder if Arizona US will be an easier espionage point than Taiwan for China to exfiltrate the tech.
The main reason is the looming threat of invasion of Taiwan from China. Such an action is catastrophic for Taiwan and the US. I thought this was obvious. Guess not.
The US is an easier espionage point for the US to steal technology from Taiwan. Most likely it will happen. But simple espionage isn't enough for this technology to fully transfer. The expertise and knowhow is just too challenging.
Do not let your patriotism blind you from the moral grayness that operates within the US as well.
So maybe read my comment in context instead of implying racism right off the bat SMH.
Also you missed that the closer you get to the consumer, the more units you sell. There's less purchasers of tools than consumers.
For a US company, probably. They seem to pick up Chinese Ph.D.s with ease.
Your post looks like a rationalization of your own purchasing decisions. If this is a correct observation I would self reflect on your own biases.
If you ran TSMC and you wanted to be sure no single disaster or war destroyed your whole manufacturing capability, where would you put the fabs? China's coast seems too close disaster wise and the same war that would dust your TW masks might destroy those too. Middle east maybe for climate and shipping logistics? Then one in the EU, perhaps spain? North america is probably third choice, and between climate and cartels that probably means the US. If third pick is paying you to go there, maybe it does make good sense.
GMAFB. Intel has several of their fabs in the Phoenix metro area, they’re another 3-5 major players in the area, and there’s a talent pipeline from the local University into these companies.
Intel’s problems aren’t an inability to fab, it’s an inability to translate their design language into the new, smaller process.
It's not just about intels capabilities. It's about economic wage standards. The cost is just too high in the US.
That being said tsmc workers in Taiwan are by far more capable then Intel this is proven by the 3nm process of which Intel is completely incapable of achieving.
> The material is just silicon.
No, a lot of chemicals are required as well.
Not to mention the lack of seismic activity and humidity that AZ offers.
The west had a lead, but 'we' trained Asians at our top institutions and worked closely with Asian manufacturers so that they can make our most sophisticated products more cheaply. There are a lot more people in Asia, and high relative poverty and cultural practices encourage a higher degree of scholastic achievement. Of course they're beating us now.
Outside of a very explicit and intense effort to develop domestic talent and retain foreign talent (or bloody wars), the west probably won't ever really lead ever again. This was the obvious outcome decades ago, but these things take time. The gap will grow and will extend up the value chain--western nations will do protectionism to try to slow this (e.g., Huawei, current chip restrictions), but cat's out of the bag.
I don't think it's a good or a bad thing from a global perspective. It just is. The great power competition that may result, wars, etc, is a very bad thing. The US in particular should compete as best it can, but it's best for everyone if we learn to live in a multipolar world.
People in grad school tend to be hard working and smart, that’s how they got there. Hypothesis: foreign nationals have to be even smarter and harder-working to secure places in US universities, hence the stereotype.
What was noticeable is that there were a lot of these students and to the extent that the US does not retain them, we are training the workforce of our competitors. To the extent we do retain them, we are poaching the talent of our competitors. My guess is this is tough to balance and where we're at now is making total global innovation higher but lowering the proportion of the pie over which the US has dominion.
You said elsewhere "things change" regarding labor force quality. They do. Asian labor across the board, but especially in China, has been rapidly increasing in cost while for example USA labor is stagnant in overall cost. Apple is medium-term going to be priced out of China just by labor costs. It is actually smart in a real-politik sense (and a business sense you deny) for labor sourcing to start looking a lot more broadly at different countries on a cost basis. USA is rich in some measures, but in terms of purchasing power and compensation of much of working class, it no longer is.
As for the quality of USA workers you've commented on a lot, I'll give you there is a serious decline in education. Saying they are slow or lazy shows you don't know anything about USA. The vast majority of the country is working itself to death and the life expectancy is cratering. As sad and reprehensible as it is, from the kind of logic you're using, a desperate and broken workforce is a GREAT business opportunity.
There is something beyond "American Exceptionalism" and "Asian Exceptionalism" and I think you really need to find it.
Overall the long term vision is to wrestle some control away from China. That is the long term bet the US and tsmc are ultimately making and what's driving the decision. But economically this is a bad bet.
Economics are but one factor of many.
Putting the rest of your statement aside, this is a very silly thing to say. The United States invented the IC and started silicon age. Integrated circuits made in Silicon Valley were literally on the moon at the same time that Taiwan was still an incredibly poor country living under martial law.
Maybe today there aren't the exact people in the US to compete with Taiwan on this chipmaking process, but that doesn't mean the US lacks the ability to compete. It's not about general country-wide work ethic. If the right person to get the job done is a one-in-a-million person... well the US has 330 of them vs 23 in Taiwan.
In the past the US could compete, but that doesn't speak to the status quo.
In the future the US may change but this is unknown. It may very well be the US will never recover. This is a realistic possibility.
Either way the status quo is that the US is currently inferior to Asia in terms of semiconductors.
The idea that tsmc and Samsung can fab better then the US is unequivocally true.
Your posts suggest that the US should just give up and let Asia -- more specifically China -- dominate semiconductors forever because US workers are lazy, fat, and stupid. Am I characterizing your position correctly?
I am simply stating the truth. It is from the perspective of a tsmc shareholder not a patriotic American who wants to beat china for no other reason then being the best.
As a tsmc shareholder one part of your post is correct. US workers are unfortunately lazier and slower and more expensive. Not necessarily stupider. You characterized this part of my position partially correctly.
As for what the US should or should not do, I never commented on that. Your patriotism and defensiveness specifically injected rivalry into your response. I literally have no opinion on what Taiwan or China or the US should do. I am neutral on that front.
I guess we just kinda stumbled into being one of the wealthiest and most developed countries in the world while having the lazier/slowest/most expensive workforce.
Wow. At least you aren't hiding your nationalistic bias.
Asian labor may be cheaper and better, but relying on resources with precarious ties to authoritarian regimes has its own cost.
Sometimes 'best' encompasses more than just bottom-line and functional metrics.
The chinese are vastly worse at fab than americans. Why do you point out that american workers are worse than TW, but neglect to mention that Chinese are even worse?
Not trying to make a judgment about people from USA, CN, TW as a whole - mostly just a function of experience.
Because they're not. PRC has worst fabs due to equipment sanctions, and now expertise sanctions (first by TW, then US). But said sanctions were placed at all because the cost and quality (east asian work ethic etc) of PRC semi workers weren't in question. Versus US workers being described as "group of giant babies" by TSMC employees ranting on PPT about doing more work for less pay than Americans in Arizona. Experience doesn't matter if you don't work hard enough. It's precisely because PRC workers, who can keep up with TSMC "military" pace, have demonstrated potential to run great fabs that led to companies like TSMC expanding in PRC in the first place, and why US had to do export controls, and do massive CHIPs subsidy to get fabs on US soil.
The US has more expensive workers who are overall worse at the job and don't have the expertise to be compete with the people in Taiwan.
The subsidies only make this a viable option for political reasons. The decision to create a fab in Arizona is strictly speaking unprofitable and essentially a economically irrational move for the company.
It is ONLY being done because of US demand and political tension from China. For a shareholder this move is not good when looking at it in terms of profit.
I know this is a hard pill to swallow but it's true.
Don't joke about Europe. The best place for tsmc to expand is actually china. But this won't happen for various reasons that we all know about.