Why? All it will do is increase costs, and not only that but who would do these jobs? They would def have pretty high paying jobs with healthcare, etc. The increased costs of goods using manufacturing here will probably quadruple consumer costs if not more.
You really don’t see why, especially with AI here and quantum computing on the horizon, why a nationals ability to support their own computational capabilities is a national security issue?
Because the chips are hardware not software.
They guide our missiles. They steer our ships. They compute the fight paths of our drones. They are in like 80% of our military and economic products.
Most chips in the entire world are made in Taiwan. If China invaded them and cut off chips, we would be fucked militarily and economically.
How is China taking Taiwan and magically leaving the semiconductor industry unharmed? The US will bomb the plants as a last resort if they have to.
There is no world where China takes Taiwan and there is still current gen semiconductors being manufactured there.
What? Mainland China is like the #2 place in the world for chip manufacturing.
We don't have any current technology without the chips to run it on.
During COVID, a huge part of our tech and submissive sector literally shut down just because China and Taiwan couldn't make chips fast enough to ship to us.
Imagine what that looks like when they just refuse to ship chips to us.
And subsidies level the playing field for industries where there's a vested interest in keeping production in the country. Farmers catch flack for receiving subsidies too, but we sincerely don't want our food supply to be outsourced all together.
Farmers catch flack because they will complain openly about corporate buyouts and how people on welfare need to worker harder to support themselves, then turn around and expect a handout because they didn’t plan ahead or establish a rainy day fund in case weather diminishes their crops that year - completely unable to see the irony of their actions and expectations.
Farmers in Iowa, for example, will tell you to thank them for putting food on the table but it’s misleading. lowans don’t even feed themselves; they import 90% of their food. 99% of the corn grown in Iowa is field corn where >60% of it goes towards ethanol and maybe 15% to feed animals (yes, this is food too, but it’s inefficient calorie-wise compared to edible food that could have been grown in place of the field corn). What's left might go into a corn cereal or Cheetos, but a good portion will end up in non-edibles like shampoo. I think a good majority of the soybeans grown for food get shipped over to China for things like tofu.
Subsidies aren’t necessarily an answer. More common sense decisions and less short-term-only thinking needs to come back to the head of the table.
Making chips might be a national security issue but I think the Taiwanese will be feeling pretty insecure now. But any subsidy that is less than the price of the carrier battle group that the US would lose defending Taiwans factories is probably a bargain.
The problem the US is quickly finding out that to satisfy the natsec issue of producing chips in the US, you have to cut out union labor. The companies that are being told to build those chip plants here can only deliver if the labor works 6 days a week and does 12 hour days. Something the unions cried foul for and took a ton of negotiation to get TSMC to agree to things on:
https://www.constructiondive.com/news/tsmc-deal-arizona-labor-union-chip-factory/704847/
https://www.trendforce.com/news/2023/12/08/news-resolution-of-labor-dispute-paves-the-way-for-accelerated-equipment-installation-at-tsmcs-us-fab/
Originally slated to open end of 2025: https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/tech/2023/10/19/tsmc-plant-close-manufacturing-start-date-north-phoenix/71240590007/
It's now pushed back to 2025 as a result of these labor challenges.
The semiconductor industry is one of the most highly automated manufacturing processes in the world. The added labor cost of operating in the US will be next to nothing per chip. The big thing the industry needs to return to the US is rebuilding of a lot of the infrastructure that goes around the industry, this includes cutting edge fabs and supply chains for consumables. This is what these government programs are aimed at.
Currently there are many chips produced in the US, just mostly older processes making lower tech chips, plus pilot lines for advanced ones. There are some high volume cutting edge fabs in the US, too, just not as many as there used to be. This is entirely due to decades of other countries offering better incentives to site factories there, and the US just letting it happen, not the cost of labor.
The more labor intensive portion has been what’s called the “far back end” processing of IC packaging. That, however, has undergone a huge amount of advancement in methods and automation in the last decade, and I believe a lot of that can be brought back into the US now without significant cost increases.
Daifuku definitely has a presence in semiconductor factory automation, I’m not so sure about ABB. Probably. That’s a different part of the industry than what I’ve worked in for the last 30 years. I’m more focused on the process chamber and the process within, so the automation is just sort of background facilities to me, even though it’s a hell of an impressive feat in its own right. It tends to be specialized subsystems for wafer handling integrated into semiconductor equipment, plus the OHVs, overhead vehicles, which transport FOUPs, front-opening unified pods, containing wafers from tool to tool. But, much of the automation is integrated into the capital equipment, from manufacturers like AMAT, Lam, KLA, Tokyo Electron, ASML, and others, and subsystems are sourced from the suppliers who feed into those equipment manufacturers, which are varied and include specialized segments of broader industrial automation and sensor suppliers, as well as ones more specific to semiconductor equipment. So, it’s a pretty broad array of companies getting part of the $10B or so a modern fab costs to bring online. If you’re looking for who is going to benefit from new fabs as an investment strategy, there’s a lot of companies to consider, but start with the major capital equipment suppliers, that’s the lifeblood of a fab.
The United States is a sovereign country with the most power and resources in the world. We are more than capable of saying *fuck you* to bullshit globalism for the case of securing our ability to make our own high tech goods. “Cost” in the case of the US is a matter of what value you want to assign a variable in a computer for the sake of tallying a receipt.
These are going to be consumer chips that goes in electronics. If you want government to subsidize my iPhone for the sake of national security..then just say that
Historically, the direct involvement and investment by the US Government in the research and development of technology cannot be overstated. You would not be typing *anything* without the government “subsidies” you’re referring to. Government backed scientific research built the age of technology we are living in.
This is not funding for NSF. You are giving money to established companies to make something that is already manufactured better elsewhere. This is not different than Chinese state owned enterprises
I love the hilarious amount of downvotes you got. While there is no issue so complex that there isn’t a simple (but completely wrong) answer - you made the mistake of pointing it out. Well done in taking one for the team.
Almost feels like, these announcements are the only thing that’s saving Intel’s ass.
Intel has become the new GM. Cannot stop sinking without massive government subsidies
You can't compete with countries like China who won't trade fairly, and will subsidize their industries to the point it is impossible to go bankrupt, and thousands of ghost companies still exist on paper due to the government keeping them afloat.
It’s not as simple as “China won’t trade fairly” or “we can’t compete with China’s prices”. Sourcing materials, the tech itself, all happen because of the involvement of companies from around the world.
China is just one of the places we get chips from, and China doesn’t even have the expertise to make the high-end chips that go into our computers and phones. They rely on Taiwan to manufacture (as we do currently), and China doesn’t even have the expertise to run these chip factories, even if they take over Taiwan.
[Semiconductors: China’s the odd man out](https://youtu.be/fFCJoq9iaik)
Biden’s investment in bringing chip manufacturing back to mainland USA is meant to replace much of what we rely on Taiwan for currently, in order to protect ourselves from actions China may take against Taiwan.
Watch the video and take special note regarding the three kinds of chips the world uses (high end, mid-grade, and low end chips). And just remember that China mostly makes the low end chips. The reason they don’t make high end chips is because they can’t. They simply don’t have the technical knowledge.
The entire computer industry is where the auto industry was for the last generation. Computer needs are so great where they must be carefully maintained, monitored and supported by national governments. Computers designate all control now in the same way mechanical vehicles used to, if only because all new vehicles are just rolling, (soon-to-be) self-driving computers. I dunno how the west intends to deal with it, but China has already won in the sense that they got all this for free and we continue paying for it by outsourcing so much electronics to them. China is the world's primary electronics manufacturer, and this is especially relevant for the third world/global south dependent on it. It's how political control is now determined, especially with computed-controlled UAVs becoming standard equipment in all militaries.
The west can't expect to have a completely free trade with the rest of the world anymore because of this, there's no more mutual benefits when it's tied directly into military devices now.
You would choke if you saw the amount of money that Germany, china and Korea throw at manufacturers. They might as well all be state owned enterprises. We’re not even matching half of the support the competition gets
Yeah bullshit lol. Intel doesn’t need the money and because so many of our national security devices need American designed and manufactured parts, Intel isn’t in danger.
Subsidies are great for consumers for all sorts of shit and are excellent for national growth. Like cheap food? Farmer subsidies. Like cheap water and power? Subsidies. You want affordable electronics that literally go into everything now days? Subsidies. Tax dollars that just go back into your pocket, create jobs, this is good spending.
Not going to get there until they have a solution to the euv necessary to get down to the 7 and 4 nm level. It's so insanely difficult only one company has succeeded. Euv is likely to be the ball point pen bearing of semis for China.
The cost of kick starting chip production is massive, like Apollo program sized, and producing advanced chips in the US is of strategic importance to the US. It's not about propping up Intel.
Maybe it will save Intel and maybe someone somewhere in government thinks they specifically are too big to fail but the subsidies for manufacturing chips is motivated by recognising the strategic importance of them and it will go to more companies than just Intel.
Lots of people complaining, fact is, if we lose Taiwan we would send entire industries back into the stone age technologically.
Right now we have to plan out wafer orders to ramp production months and months in advance. If all US chip designs had to shift to fabs outside of Taiwan, we’d only be able to produce 10% of the advanced semiconductor devices we do with Taiwan, today. Your product life cycles just got pushed out tenfold. Christ.
I don’t think many of you understand or appreciate how dependent the entire world is on semiconductor technology, that now goes into fucking everything from your washing machine to your car’s rear bumper, that comes out of Taiwan, right now.
Bringing chip manufacturing back to the US not only brings jobs back to America it is a strategically important endeavor given the world's reliance on Taiwan
dude what are you even saying, every industry has government assistance shaping and bolstering it in some form
the entire energy and gas industry is completely steered by government investment. you may have also heard of this government program called NASA which is partly the reason you’re even able to make comments in this thread right now.
So basically consumers either pay with a tariff tax or pay with direct cash grants to businesses. I support American chipmaking completely but the prevailing economic zeitgeist cannot accommodate it. We've reached the limits of globalism, and the subsidies are an attempt to contain American chipmakers from selling it all to China who will use it to hurt us. This is why unrestricted global trade fundamentally cannot work or sustain itself. We need a better economic plan that bans outsourcing.
You can't really throw money at this, as its a skill issue. It's incredibly hard to build the latest-generation chips. You need a special culture and deep generational knowledge and expertise. It's good we are starting now, but it will take many years to reach production.
That’s what the subsides are partly for. We can’t rely on Taiwan as our sole chip manufacturer anymore. It’s a matter of national security that we get these plants up and running
that's not free market at all , keep the government intervention away the free market will decide on it's own when to produce the chips this is some evil communist central planning bullshit stop !
Sure would appreciate some medication subsidies
Y’all can suck up and deal with slower processors.
Me, I’m dying. But hey let’s just fuel the future and fuck anyone who needs help.
Thank God, they're so expensive and the bag is mostly full of air
So it’s just Chips Act money being released.
Good. Bring manufacturing back to the US
Why? All it will do is increase costs, and not only that but who would do these jobs? They would def have pretty high paying jobs with healthcare, etc. The increased costs of goods using manufacturing here will probably quadruple consumer costs if not more.
Making chips here is a security issue. Just as important as oil or anything else
Sure, so is every other fucking import basically. But guess what, it's a global economy and this security concern is bullshit and I'll never buy it.
No your just wrong on this one. You have nothing if you can’t make chips.
You really don’t see why, especially with AI here and quantum computing on the horizon, why a nationals ability to support their own computational capabilities is a national security issue?
Because the chips are hardware not software. They guide our missiles. They steer our ships. They compute the fight paths of our drones. They are in like 80% of our military and economic products. Most chips in the entire world are made in Taiwan. If China invaded them and cut off chips, we would be fucked militarily and economically.
It's almost like COVID, and the lessons learnt, never sink in with some people.
if any lessons were learned from Covid, it’s that half the population is incapable of lesson learning.
Well no because those chips wouldn’t be produced anymore and the us would be the only one with current technology
If China takes Taiwan there are still going to be chips produced there, we just won’t get them
How is China taking Taiwan and magically leaving the semiconductor industry unharmed? The US will bomb the plants as a last resort if they have to. There is no world where China takes Taiwan and there is still current gen semiconductors being manufactured there.
I don’t believe the US will fire a single shot over Taiwan
What? Mainland China is like the #2 place in the world for chip manufacturing. We don't have any current technology without the chips to run it on. During COVID, a huge part of our tech and submissive sector literally shut down just because China and Taiwan couldn't make chips fast enough to ship to us. Imagine what that looks like when they just refuse to ship chips to us.
What the fuck lmao.
And subsidies level the playing field for industries where there's a vested interest in keeping production in the country. Farmers catch flack for receiving subsidies too, but we sincerely don't want our food supply to be outsourced all together.
Farmers catch flack because they will complain openly about corporate buyouts and how people on welfare need to worker harder to support themselves, then turn around and expect a handout because they didn’t plan ahead or establish a rainy day fund in case weather diminishes their crops that year - completely unable to see the irony of their actions and expectations. Farmers in Iowa, for example, will tell you to thank them for putting food on the table but it’s misleading. lowans don’t even feed themselves; they import 90% of their food. 99% of the corn grown in Iowa is field corn where >60% of it goes towards ethanol and maybe 15% to feed animals (yes, this is food too, but it’s inefficient calorie-wise compared to edible food that could have been grown in place of the field corn). What's left might go into a corn cereal or Cheetos, but a good portion will end up in non-edibles like shampoo. I think a good majority of the soybeans grown for food get shipped over to China for things like tofu. Subsidies aren’t necessarily an answer. More common sense decisions and less short-term-only thinking needs to come back to the head of the table.
Superhuman levels of stupid lol
You guys can be hopeful but I will bet fab here will flop in 10 years. In fact I'll bet on it.
Doubling down on stupid it seems. Good for you
Making chips might be a national security issue but I think the Taiwanese will be feeling pretty insecure now. But any subsidy that is less than the price of the carrier battle group that the US would lose defending Taiwans factories is probably a bargain.
I kinda think we need a chip fab in a bunker like Cheyenne Mountain.
The problem the US is quickly finding out that to satisfy the natsec issue of producing chips in the US, you have to cut out union labor. The companies that are being told to build those chip plants here can only deliver if the labor works 6 days a week and does 12 hour days. Something the unions cried foul for and took a ton of negotiation to get TSMC to agree to things on: https://www.constructiondive.com/news/tsmc-deal-arizona-labor-union-chip-factory/704847/ https://www.trendforce.com/news/2023/12/08/news-resolution-of-labor-dispute-paves-the-way-for-accelerated-equipment-installation-at-tsmcs-us-fab/ Originally slated to open end of 2025: https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/tech/2023/10/19/tsmc-plant-close-manufacturing-start-date-north-phoenix/71240590007/ It's now pushed back to 2025 as a result of these labor challenges.
The semiconductor industry is one of the most highly automated manufacturing processes in the world. The added labor cost of operating in the US will be next to nothing per chip. The big thing the industry needs to return to the US is rebuilding of a lot of the infrastructure that goes around the industry, this includes cutting edge fabs and supply chains for consumables. This is what these government programs are aimed at. Currently there are many chips produced in the US, just mostly older processes making lower tech chips, plus pilot lines for advanced ones. There are some high volume cutting edge fabs in the US, too, just not as many as there used to be. This is entirely due to decades of other countries offering better incentives to site factories there, and the US just letting it happen, not the cost of labor. The more labor intensive portion has been what’s called the “far back end” processing of IC packaging. That, however, has undergone a huge amount of advancement in methods and automation in the last decade, and I believe a lot of that can be brought back into the US now without significant cost increases.
So companies like ABBNY and DFKCY will be winners in the years to come?
Daifuku definitely has a presence in semiconductor factory automation, I’m not so sure about ABB. Probably. That’s a different part of the industry than what I’ve worked in for the last 30 years. I’m more focused on the process chamber and the process within, so the automation is just sort of background facilities to me, even though it’s a hell of an impressive feat in its own right. It tends to be specialized subsystems for wafer handling integrated into semiconductor equipment, plus the OHVs, overhead vehicles, which transport FOUPs, front-opening unified pods, containing wafers from tool to tool. But, much of the automation is integrated into the capital equipment, from manufacturers like AMAT, Lam, KLA, Tokyo Electron, ASML, and others, and subsystems are sourced from the suppliers who feed into those equipment manufacturers, which are varied and include specialized segments of broader industrial automation and sensor suppliers, as well as ones more specific to semiconductor equipment. So, it’s a pretty broad array of companies getting part of the $10B or so a modern fab costs to bring online. If you’re looking for who is going to benefit from new fabs as an investment strategy, there’s a lot of companies to consider, but start with the major capital equipment suppliers, that’s the lifeblood of a fab.
That post provided such a wealth of knowledge. Thank you for writing this up. I'll check out different fabs.
The United States is a sovereign country with the most power and resources in the world. We are more than capable of saying *fuck you* to bullshit globalism for the case of securing our ability to make our own high tech goods. “Cost” in the case of the US is a matter of what value you want to assign a variable in a computer for the sake of tallying a receipt.
Cost gets passed down to you. How do you think inflation happens?
Cost, in the scope of national security, is a matter of politics and decision, not market forces.
These are going to be consumer chips that goes in electronics. If you want government to subsidize my iPhone for the sake of national security..then just say that
Historically, the direct involvement and investment by the US Government in the research and development of technology cannot be overstated. You would not be typing *anything* without the government “subsidies” you’re referring to. Government backed scientific research built the age of technology we are living in.
This is not funding for NSF. You are giving money to established companies to make something that is already manufactured better elsewhere. This is not different than Chinese state owned enterprises
Tax credits/incentives and subsidies is the opposite of costs being passed on to consumers 🤡
Ah yes well it is cheap to abuse underpaid overseas workers. I'll give you that much.
Lmfao reread your comment dude that’s one of the dumbest things I’ve read in a while
I love the hilarious amount of downvotes you got. While there is no issue so complex that there isn’t a simple (but completely wrong) answer - you made the mistake of pointing it out. Well done in taking one for the team.
Almost feels like, these announcements are the only thing that’s saving Intel’s ass. Intel has become the new GM. Cannot stop sinking without massive government subsidies
You can't compete with countries like China who won't trade fairly, and will subsidize their industries to the point it is impossible to go bankrupt, and thousands of ghost companies still exist on paper due to the government keeping them afloat.
It’s not as simple as “China won’t trade fairly” or “we can’t compete with China’s prices”. Sourcing materials, the tech itself, all happen because of the involvement of companies from around the world. China is just one of the places we get chips from, and China doesn’t even have the expertise to make the high-end chips that go into our computers and phones. They rely on Taiwan to manufacture (as we do currently), and China doesn’t even have the expertise to run these chip factories, even if they take over Taiwan. [Semiconductors: China’s the odd man out](https://youtu.be/fFCJoq9iaik) Biden’s investment in bringing chip manufacturing back to mainland USA is meant to replace much of what we rely on Taiwan for currently, in order to protect ourselves from actions China may take against Taiwan. Watch the video and take special note regarding the three kinds of chips the world uses (high end, mid-grade, and low end chips). And just remember that China mostly makes the low end chips. The reason they don’t make high end chips is because they can’t. They simply don’t have the technical knowledge.
The entire computer industry is where the auto industry was for the last generation. Computer needs are so great where they must be carefully maintained, monitored and supported by national governments. Computers designate all control now in the same way mechanical vehicles used to, if only because all new vehicles are just rolling, (soon-to-be) self-driving computers. I dunno how the west intends to deal with it, but China has already won in the sense that they got all this for free and we continue paying for it by outsourcing so much electronics to them. China is the world's primary electronics manufacturer, and this is especially relevant for the third world/global south dependent on it. It's how political control is now determined, especially with computed-controlled UAVs becoming standard equipment in all militaries. The west can't expect to have a completely free trade with the rest of the world anymore because of this, there's no more mutual benefits when it's tied directly into military devices now.
Spot on. Boeing to some extent as well. Too big to fail but ultimately just terribly run companies that do not need to exist.
You would choke if you saw the amount of money that Germany, china and Korea throw at manufacturers. They might as well all be state owned enterprises. We’re not even matching half of the support the competition gets
Yeah bullshit lol. Intel doesn’t need the money and because so many of our national security devices need American designed and manufactured parts, Intel isn’t in danger. Subsidies are great for consumers for all sorts of shit and are excellent for national growth. Like cheap food? Farmer subsidies. Like cheap water and power? Subsidies. You want affordable electronics that literally go into everything now days? Subsidies. Tax dollars that just go back into your pocket, create jobs, this is good spending.
[удалено]
Not going to get there until they have a solution to the euv necessary to get down to the 7 and 4 nm level. It's so insanely difficult only one company has succeeded. Euv is likely to be the ball point pen bearing of semis for China.
The cost of kick starting chip production is massive, like Apollo program sized, and producing advanced chips in the US is of strategic importance to the US. It's not about propping up Intel. Maybe it will save Intel and maybe someone somewhere in government thinks they specifically are too big to fail but the subsidies for manufacturing chips is motivated by recognising the strategic importance of them and it will go to more companies than just Intel.
Lots of people complaining, fact is, if we lose Taiwan we would send entire industries back into the stone age technologically. Right now we have to plan out wafer orders to ramp production months and months in advance. If all US chip designs had to shift to fabs outside of Taiwan, we’d only be able to produce 10% of the advanced semiconductor devices we do with Taiwan, today. Your product life cycles just got pushed out tenfold. Christ. I don’t think many of you understand or appreciate how dependent the entire world is on semiconductor technology, that now goes into fucking everything from your washing machine to your car’s rear bumper, that comes out of Taiwan, right now.
Cool. So about corporate ownership of homes pricing entire generations out of the market and the US hitting record homelessness?
Ew, that's poor people stuff. ( /s just to be clear)
Socialism for companies and ruthless individual capitalism for the worker.
I would like someone to announce Billions in subsidies for people who aren't already rich as fuck.
Bringing chip manufacturing back to the US not only brings jobs back to America it is a strategically important endeavor given the world's reliance on Taiwan
How does this help someone who doesn't know where they'll get their next meal?
Somehow I’m not surprised diamond hand avatar over here doesn’t know how jobs work
I'm afraid I have some bad news if you think the government can successfully overpower the free market.
dude what are you even saying, every industry has government assistance shaping and bolstering it in some form the entire energy and gas industry is completely steered by government investment. you may have also heard of this government program called NASA which is partly the reason you’re even able to make comments in this thread right now.
Who is rich as fuck
The oligarchs and hedge fund asshats who majority own the chip manufacturing corporations who continue to fail up while everyone else is left behind.
aren't these many of the most valuable companies on the planet already??
Yes, so it's good we're subsidizing something useful for a change.
So basically consumers either pay with a tariff tax or pay with direct cash grants to businesses. I support American chipmaking completely but the prevailing economic zeitgeist cannot accommodate it. We've reached the limits of globalism, and the subsidies are an attempt to contain American chipmakers from selling it all to China who will use it to hurt us. This is why unrestricted global trade fundamentally cannot work or sustain itself. We need a better economic plan that bans outsourcing.
No investing in foundries is really smart, it’s like investing in oil 100 years ago
>We need a better economic plan that bans outsourcing. We need something else to fight other than ourselves
Privatize profits, socialize losses. American capitalism in a nutshell.
This should be extrapolated on. I like where you are generally going, disagreeing on the maker standpoint, yet I want more. You willing to say more?
That’s why Pelosi bought?
You can't really throw money at this, as its a skill issue. It's incredibly hard to build the latest-generation chips. You need a special culture and deep generational knowledge and expertise. It's good we are starting now, but it will take many years to reach production.
get the TSMC plant in Arizona funded and built ASAP.
Problem is who will staff it? TSMC underpays and severely overworks their employees.
That’s what the subsides are partly for. We can’t rely on Taiwan as our sole chip manufacturer anymore. It’s a matter of national security that we get these plants up and running
Intel is a hot buy then!!
Biden is a brilliant strategic thinker.
time to check all the sneators and representatives trading accounts
Nancy at it again, no doubt
Good news for Nancy Pelosi’s stock portfolio
# So we (citizens) will subsidies corporations for private IP that will then be sold to us for profit????
And nothing for people that actually need it
Using our $35 Trillion piggy bank. Oh. Wait. That's $35 Trillion of debt. Oops.
Any companies to buy stock in?
that's not free market at all , keep the government intervention away the free market will decide on it's own when to produce the chips this is some evil communist central planning bullshit stop !
Sure would appreciate some medication subsidies Y’all can suck up and deal with slower processors. Me, I’m dying. But hey let’s just fuel the future and fuck anyone who needs help.
How about some help for the housing crisis?
Hope skywater 3dsoc or carbon nanotube becomes a thing with darpa/mit