[ExI] Chip War

[John Clark]

*I highly recommend the 2022 book "Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most
Critical Technology" by Chris Miller. It clearly explains why the small
island of Taiwan, only 100 miles off the coast of mainland China, is vital
to the world's economy, it's because TSMC's chip fabrication plants are
there and they use hyper advanced hyper precise machine tools manufactured
by the Dutch company ASML, and Taiwan is the only place in the world
capable of mass producing chips at the cutting edge of technology such as
those that fuel the current AI revolution, and that Apple uses in their
phones. Thanks to Nvidia (the most valuable company in the world) the US
still designs the world's most advanced chips, but it no longer
manufactures them, by contrast no company in Taiwan designs chips, they
just manufacture them. INTEL once prided itself on its mastery of the chip
manufacturing process but in recent years it has fallen far behind and is
currently incapable of making the advanced chips that TSMC can, and Micron,
the only other company that makes chips on US soil, only makes commodity
memory chips that were never on the cutting edge of technology.*

*Miller points out that it's dangerous to tie the national security of the
US to the fate of an island that mainland China insists they own. Just one
of TSMC's factories, FAB #18, cost well over $25 billion and in 2022 was
the most expensive factory that human beings have ever made, and just one
drone armed with a few hundred pounds of conventional explosives could
disrupt all the very delicate equipment in it and send the entire world
into a deep recession. China spends far more money importing foreign made
chips than it does importing oil and is way behind Taiwan, and even the
US, in its domestic chip manufacturing capabilities. And Russia is way
behind China. Since ASML is not allowed to sell any of their most advanced
chip making equipment to China, Miller estimates it would be a decade and
cost several trillion dollars to reach the level Taiwan is currently at,
but TSMC is not standing still and is spending furiously on R&D, so after a
decade China still wouldn't be on the cutting edge. China knows all this of
course, that's why in recent days it's been regarding Taiwan with envious
eyes and is slowly and surely drawing their plans against it.*

*John K Clark*
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