Article complains about "reliance on Asia" but neglects to mention a giant elephant of a problem.<p><pre><code> PACKAGING
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I had to shout it! Sorry, HN guidelines.<p>Intel makes chips in USA fabs, then sends them abroad, mostly to Asia, to be packaged. Same for anyone else making chips in the USA.<p>I'm retired now but I highly doubt this has changed recently. It's been going on since the 1970s if not earlier. There are probably a few chips made for the US military that are packaged domestically. But over 99% are sent overseas.<p>Edit: To take it further, I bet that nowadays over 90% of everything related to electronics manufacturing has moved overseas. It used to be that you could fabricate PCBs domestically. You could have them stuffed with chips and soldered domestically. But now very little volume capability exists for that here. It's all "offshore", because MBAs decided that would be cheaper.
I kinda prefer well-balanced mutual dependency. This current wave of sinophobia is seriously worrying. Even in the darkest days of the Cold War, the Soviet Republic and NATO countries had significant trade relations, providing not just economic benefits but a stabilising mechanism identical to MAD in principle, but with far less actual MADness in a worst case.<p>China's ascent is going to happen. And contrary to this relentless US campaign to escalate, I cannot even come up with what exactly the US considers China's agression? Is all this talk of everything up to and including war seriously proportional to the thread that is... China being chosen to build some 5G infrastructure?<p>The British saw their Empire crumble after investing hundreds of thousands of lives and evenly distributing an entire Island's worth of forest in hull-shaped carcasses at the bottom of the world's seas. For that, they were left with nothing but a decent long drink and three cricket teams to lose against. Luckily, they have something not entirely unlike a deep-seated sense for civility and took it with some humour and only minor collective psychosis.<p>Is the end of the American Empire going to be a Republican Id in a total meltdown of nationalistic rage set off by this seemingly unavoidable narcissistic injury that China's ascend represents?<p>The prospect of America with diminished economic and cultural power, completely losing the optimism, openness, and sense of responsibility that carried it through the 20th "American" century, and retaining only the brute power of its oversized military as the only remaining source of agency is, frankly, terrifying.
Based on the article, it looks like only TSMC and Samsung can make 10nm chips as a service for other companies, and despite also being able to make 10nm chips Intel hasn't opened their fabs to contract work. Anyone know why this is? In the article it looks like Intel's spokesperson said they were willing to start offering their 10nm process as a service with fabs in the US, but I'm wondering why Intel didn't offer a foundry service earlier.
If you are on an iOS/iPad OS device, you can use my Shortcut to circumvent the paywall:<p><a href="https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/11a5ce44a9dc44e6b525b22ca62ee286" rel="nofollow">https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/11a5ce44a9dc44e6b525b22ca62...</a><p>It clears the cookies of the current page, takes the URL and uses Google to redirect you back to that URL, causing the page to assume that you clicked on a search result and are a first time visitor.
Bringing back manufacturing to the US will be extremely hard.<p>1) US citizens want top dollar for their labor and the lowest price for the product. 2 opposing forces.<p>2) The US has lost the experienced labor force that's needed<p>3) Regulations make it very expensive to start and maintain a factory.<p>4) The median age in the US is over 38 yrs old. Way past the education and career-building ages.<p>5) The US has started to limit immigration so importing the talent will not happen.<p>6) Capitalism rules in the US. And Capitalism says build it at the lowest price possible. Which rules out the US.<p>7) As the US population ages, more of the country's resources will be focused on health care and the care of the elderly and less on creating a manufacturing workforce.<p>8) Robotics is not always the cheapest form of manufacturing. Building it outside US will still have its advantages.<p>It's not impossible but it will take a few generations and a consistent US policy to do it.