Good. It was a naked attempt at a shakedown, and also 100% a bluff. TSMC honestly should cancel/rescind all the fab construction they’re starting to spin up in the US, honestly. Now is emphatically not the time to undermine their strategic defense policy, which largely revolves around “if the CCP invades, we will melt our chip fabs to slag”.
this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2025
548 points (99.6% liked)
Technology
75758 readers
2925 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
The idea behind that fab was so US can continue to build weapons if Taiwan was under attack, this why it wasn't the latest technology. The weapons would still be important to defend it, but yeah this admin is signalling Taiwan won't get help and is asking for 50% so it won't suffer consequences of not helping them.
They also seem very dumb if they think they could spin 50% just like that even if Taiwan was completely on board with this.
seems very dumb
Kinda the MO of this regime, if we’re being honest
Yeah, I think the whole idea of the US wanting the chips produced inside its own borders makes sense in a vacuum. China fucks around (which, sure, is against their character), chips are safe.
Obviously we don't live in a vacuum, and the US diplomatic mission is, at best, totally unreadable, and at worst, won't help anyone but itself.
As with just about any other nation, the US is using what is ostensibly it's only bargaining chip these days, their massive consumerism, knowing that Taiwan sells the majority of its chips to the US.
This play seems to be Trump's only play: Demand something outrageous, with some thinly veiled threats overlaying the demand. Get rejected. Receive counterproposal that is far, far less than initial demand. Tout superiority.
They were already building a plant in US via Chips Act. Though looks like he compromised that.
Good. It was a naked attempt at a shakedown, and also 100% a bluff.
It takes more than a few years to spin up a chip fab, with an outlay on the order of hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars. Even if they'd been eager to take the US up on the deal (and why would they want to relinquish a functional monopoly on cutting end processors?), there's no way they'd be dealing with the same administration by the time it was completed. Even if Trump was still in office, the fucker changes his mind every five minutes. Not conducive to long-term economic projects like this.
Now is emphatically not the time to undermine their strategic defense policy, which largely revolves around “if the CCP invades, we will melt our chip fabs to slag”.
TSMC won't have their edge forever. China's fabs are catching up quickly, with 5nm chips in production and 3nm chips possible in a few more years. This was a good strategy when China needed to import these chips and Taiwan had the market cornered. But if TSMC's rigged-to-explode labs go up in smoke after China's a major player in the market, that actually benefits Beijing.
Strapping yourself with Semtex might be a savvy play in a single moment, but it's not going to work long term.
That's before you consider the real threat Taiwan poses to China is as a launchpad for US strikes into the interior.
Oh I know - but I’m saying they should halt efforts now, because they’ve been going on for several years (I think close to 4-5?) at this point.
I was also under the impression that Mainland was still meaningfully behind the cutting edge, that TSMC was absolutely not resting on their laurels, and that the prospect of the CCP fabs fully catching up isn’t super likely. Out of curiosity, do you have any references/articles about recent ~~CSMC~~SMIC/etc lithography advancements?
The Chinese state industries have been happy enough to throw big chunks of their GDP at the problem of high end chip fab, and it's paying dividends.
That's not to say TSMC is idle, but the whole problem of living on the bleeding edge is that you've got nobody to crib from. All your next-gen advances have to be earned through high end R&D and brute force engineering and lots of money and time. Their rivals can reverse engineer their technology, learn from TSMC's mistakes, and generally coast in their wake.
What's sort of incredibly about America's Intel is that they haven't done any of this shit, clinging to their dead-end chip design long after its expiration date and missing the boom in demand for high end chips entirely.
Out of curiosity, do you have any references/articles about recent CSMC/etc lithography advancements?
Nothing you couldn't just Google up yourself, I'm sure. I picked up SMIC based on their advances in DUV lithography employed by ASML and it paid out big. The high margins on sale are justifying comparatively lower success rates of manufacturing.
What’s sort of incredibly about America’s Intel is that they haven’t done any of this shit, clinging to their dead-end chip design long after its expiration date and missing the boom in demand for high end chips entirely.
This is the most baffling thing to me. How could Intel leadership be so incompetent? They had the inside track to hundreds of billions in revenue and just decided to coast.
Because modern western business is about cashing out the business to squeeze out a couple extra bucks each quarter. They aren't interested in making a product, just cutting costs, raising prices, and issuing stock buybacks
How could Intel leadership be so incompetent?
For the leadership, it was a cash cow. They got a fat dividend doing very little, even as upstarts blasted past them.
They had the inside track to hundreds of billions in revenue and just decided to coast.
At some point, the effort to get from $10B to $100B isn't worth the pressure. How many extra yachts do I actually need?
Your points are exactly why it is surprising. Most executives don't think like me and you. If you give them a million dollars, they say they need 10 million. If you give them a billion dollars, they say they need 10 billion. There is no end to their greed. Look at how Google and Amazon are still trying to strong-arm their industries to get even more billions of dollars. Musk is out there demanding a trillion dollars.
CEOs and execs at large multinational corps like Intel don't usually coast. They might make strategic blunders, but they usually push to make as much money as they can. If they fail, they fall back on their golden parachutes. If they win, they get shitloads more money.
If you give them a million dollars, they say they need 10 million.
Sure. If you show up with a bag of money, they're going to tell you they need two bags.
But if you ask them to work twice as hard to get that second bag? Suddenly, you're asking too much.
CEOs and execs at large multinational corps like Intel don’t usually coast.
They do. They're just not the companies people get excited about. Tons of US business is conducted by C-levels who are barely more than figureheads, commanding massive salaries to glad hands a few friends in between golf games.
Steve Balmer is the out layer. Sam Alton is the out layer. Elon Musk is the norm.
Your points are exactly why it is surprising. Most executives don't think like me and you. If you give them a million dollars, they say they need 10 million. If you give them a billion dollars, they say they need 10 billion.
I think hidden in there is a misconception about capitalism, that its about competition and being the best. While its a nice myth for grade school civics about why we are capitalist its just not the case. Capitalism is about profit. As long as you have it and its growing you are doing well. Intel did get very complacent, but it was still projected to grow and be profitable.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
Interesting, thanks. And yeah, I too find it utterly baffling at how Intel is turning into a has-been before our eyes. They were The Chip Guys for ages, and then the fucking quants got put in charge and carved away so much of the engineering leadership and underpinnings that it’s a husk of what it was in the 80s and 90s.
I would, however, point out that TSMC’s whole deal is “define, and produce at scale, the bleeding edge of integrated circuit designs”, so the bit about them cribbing off of people hasn’t really been a variable in their equations for at least a couple decades. They have been major (arguably, the predominant) pioneers in chip lithography for a while now.
so the bit about them cribbing off of people hasn’t really been a variable in their equations for at least a couple decades
That's meant to say they can't do that from the front of the pack. There's not much to crib from that they don't invent.
That's a burden on TMSC that guys like Samsung and SMIC don't suffer from, at least until they can match pace. For the time being, other firms can close in on TMSC by following in their footsteps (or, at least, avoiding their errors).
load more comments
(1 replies)
Intel: did I hear somebody say we should announce our newest 14nm+++++++++ platform?
load more comments
(1 replies)
China has the engineering talent and numbers to catch up for certain, but SMIC is not producing advanced chips in volumes, even as designs for next gens of chips and SMIC technology come out fast.
The big factor in all of this is that the market for chips in China is 5x+ that of US, and the business interests of anyone in the sector outside of China would be to choose China over US if they only had to pick one. US IP is going to expire soon enough, but is already abused for colonial power over global chip sector.
China is definitely at a mature point where home grown chips can already compete in phones/laptops (Huawei) and AI due to their energy infrastructure. They don't need to invade Taiwan to have useful electronics, and the home grown industry will accelerate faster than West's. While TSMC's margin of leadership will narrow, they will still be ahead for more than 5 years.
load more comments
(4 replies)
"Give up your only bargaining chip otherwise we'll hurt you!"
Hmm wonder where I've seen this before...
ahem Russia-Ukraine ahem
Bargaining chip. Hehe, I see what you did there.
Lol, pun wasn't intended, but this is such a lovely coincidence
load more comments
(1 replies)
Hey, why don't you give us the one thing that protects you and floats your economy?
Just do it!
Gee, I wonder why other countries would not want to move production to the US after ICE arrested the Koreans who were doing exactly that?
No way to know, I guess.
Especially when the only thing keeping you protected from invasion is that only your country has those production facilities.
It's quite interesting that no other country has managed to build a chip foundry that would even remotely rival TSMC.
Especially considering they use third-party lithography machines.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
What? Taiwan doesn't want to give up its only strategic advantage? I'm shocked.
/uj
I'm curious how long it would take to build the supply chains and fabs to make the 50% things a reality.
And why would anyone expect Taiwan to give on this? They don’t benefit at all.
Art of the deal my ass.
Art of the ass. Deal?
Deal.
Trump doesn't know how to strike a deal, he just bullies people into accepting his terms.
Yeah, that only worked on small contractors when he was building his casinos because they didn’t have the infinite Russian money for lawyers.
Turns out that doesn’t work so well on sovereign nations and international corporations.
It probably would have been on the table if Kamala had won.
I mean, the democrats just had to have a primary, put in a populist and watch Trump get buried.
Instead we have this.
I mean, let's not get crazy now.
Why would the Taiwan government give up half of its leverage for US defense and investment if Kamala was president?
load more comments
(3 replies)
Amen to that brother. It was simple and we screwed it.
Caught between an Authoritarian and a Fascist.
A ROC between two hard places.
LMFAO
So... is PRC pronounced... PRiCk?
Btw, USA pronounced OOo-sah
Poland: First time?
load more comments
(1 replies)
Who the heck would to move jobs to such an openly racist, bigoted and xenophobic country.
More to the point what business would want to spend ungodly amounts of money building a manufacturing plant in a fascist dictatorship that would just then steal the plant from you? Yeah, I think they'll be fine keeping their assets out of trump's tiny little rat hands.
No surprise, when this admin is sending signals that it won't help. Doing what they are asking would allow US to give Taiwan to China without much consequences to US.
feels almost like someone asked to give up their nukes. Okay maybe that was a bit exaggerated...
load more comments
(1 replies)
Wait hold on, I gotta take my wife over to the neighbor. He just wants to abuse her. Oh me? Oh okay, I suppose so! Well I'll be back in a few hours he actually wants to do me only, he says. Ofcourse that's what I would have to do if anyone else needs my body. How about 50%?
view more: next ›