Meanwhile Europe only got 40k WSPMs of 12+ nm capacity: https://overclock3d.net/news/software/bringing_advanced_semi...

Europe is already a great place to build your life and despite the narrative about "EU killing businesses with over regulations", Europe is an exporter, that is EU makes physical things in large quantities(that's why USA is able to blackmail EU with tariffs). The infrastructure is in place and there are both many nuclear reactors that were decommissioned early or not yet commissioned but canceled/put on hold as well as regions with plenty of sunshine or hydro power opportunities and also has all the expertise to re-work those quickly.

It's really a political decision to push for something like that or not. Geopolitics may eventually make it happen, who knows? At this time it makes more economical sense to make the tools and send them close to the larger supply chain of electronic products production.

The problem is that unlike Airbus, which (highly inefficiently) can be made in multiple countries, you can't really spread out parts of a fab that way. The most you can do is fab machines + chips + chip packaging. Netherlands already has fab machines and in packaging there isn't a high margin.

That leaves chips, and you can be sure that whoever gets the fabs, the other EU countries will throw a shit fit and demand counter investments to compensate. And on top of that there is also regional animosity. So even if it makes logical sense to pop the fab down in the middle of the blue banana, it won't make political sense because France and all of South and East EU will be angry about "the rich getting richer".

And how are we gonna do that exactly? EU runs on national interests of those footing the bill, mainly France and Germany as the largest net contributors.

When you're relying on national subsidies to build and run a factory and adjacent infrastructure in a country, you're tied to national interests and demands of those countries footing the bill for all that infrastructure.

So the likes of France and Germany aren't gonna give billions in subsidies from their taxpayers' money to semiconductor companies so that they can incorporate in Netherlands to dodge taxes and then create jobs in low-cost Poland and Romania instead of at home, even though that's already been happening to an extent in other industries over the last 20+ years.

It's the same with arms purchases now. France blocked Ukraine from using its money to buy British made weapons that are already available, since it expects that money to go back into the French economy, not to the economy of a competitor, even if the much needed weapons will arrive much later.

Yeah I know, UK isn't EU anymore, but the point still stands, as EU nations are still economically competitors to each other and they're not gonna spend their tax money to fund competing economies even in the EU block.

Look across the Atlantic for what will eventually happen once you concentrate the power.

I say the power should remain close to the people, decentralized and democratic, not centralised and concentrated.

Since when is the quality of arguments and the understanding of economics and politics tied to the age of your account? Is this how arguments are won here? Age discrimination goes against HN rules. Your opinion on global events is not automatically more correct than others just because you've been on HN 10 years longer than others.

>posting doubious takes like this

Universally recognized and factually proven facts = dubious to you?

What (counter-)arguments do you actually bring to this discussion, other than throwing ageism and baseless accusations at people as your strategy to discredit their opinions you dislike?

That's exactly the opposite of the HN rules.

You’re asserting that account age shouldn’t matter, and that any scrutiny is morally illegitimate.

Nobody is discriminating against you. It’s just that account age is one of the few signals that an online platform has to go by.

HN absolutely recognizes this in their policy, considering that they give new accounts an entirely different color to make them stand out from the rest, and that they don’t allow downvotes unless your account has achieved a certain karma level.

How do you react towards ageism and discrimination?

>It’s just that account age is one of the few signals that an online platform has to go by.

None of that invalidates my arguments.

>HN absolutely recognizes this in their policy, considering that they give new accounts an entirely different color to make them stand out from the rest, and that they don’t allow downvotes unless your account has achieved a certain karma level.

Except that I am allowed to downvote.

I agree, its a rather shady approach. But here you go, we'll get more and more of this, its a conveneient method to discredit discussion partners with unwanted opinions.

The Eurobarometer and other surveys clearly show the majority of EU citizens want further integration in lots of fields including defence, foreign policy, fiscal matters, etc. Further integration, such as the adoption of the Euro, is legally mandated and pretty much inevitable.

So when you say "we", you should clarify who you're claiming to represent, because it's not most of us.

Where, when and how were the samples for that barometer taken?

If they're really so confident those number being accurate, why don't we have referendum and we can decided there and ink it to make it official.

Secondly, even if the US as a country is tighter integrated and more financially successful than the EU as a union, the US is not a successful model example of a well functioning society that people in the EU would aspire to emulate, on the contrary, they'd rather preserve the status quo than turning into something resembling what the US has become.

But something tells me that's not what Europeans generally want...

EU citizens understood and recognize that economic supremacy of some private sector industries is pointless if the gains all go to the hands of a few tax dodging trillionaires with sex trafficking private islands, while the externalities get outsourced to the environment and the public sector to deal with leading to increased wealth inequality, homelessness, crime, drug addiction, etc

That's why they want to see policies that will first address the environment and quality of life, before shareholder returns, even if that makes them less economically dominant.

EU people don't want to live in a world of fent zombies on the streets, cars with smashed windows from petty crime, food deserts, homeless people, all in the name of economic superiority.

It has zero to do with communism.

Do you see the perfectly exemplified contradiction here? Centralized government power always tends to want more and more control, more and more power over time, while shedding any and all forms accountability. It never stops and says "ok, we have just the right amount of control now, we can start back off and leave everyone be". That never happened in history of humanity.

The evolution of the US central government you gave is the perfect example of this overreach that grew with time and the best argument why we shouldn't try to emulate that. Because so is the EU compared to how it was 30 years ago, and it will just keep growing and swallowing more control and influence over its members, with less and less accountability, and it won't just stop when you think the right balance has been achieved. It will only stop when IT decides it wants to, but by that point it will be too late for you to have a choice in this.

Plus, even ignoring all that, what worked in the US 200-300 years ago, can't simply be applied to Europe now. You can't simply copy-paste policies across continents, cultures and time, and imagine it will simply Just-Work™.

EU is not a country. It's a political and economic union. And I think it can't become a country since peoples of member states desire to keep a degree of national sovereignty.

Uh, no the point doesn't stand anymore if your example isn't actually a reflection of it - at least not anymore then any other unfounded opinion pieces with no collaborating evidence

What part of my original statement you quoted

   "EU nations are still economically competitors to each other and they're not gonna spend their tax money to fund competing economies even in the EU block"

>unfounded opinion pieces with no collaborating evidence

Maybe reading comprehension or understanding of international politics within the EU is not your strength, but I gave you the evidence and arguments in the comment you quoted. Maybe you don't like to hear what I said, but that's another thing entirely.

> It's the same with arms purchases now. France blocked Ukraine from using its money to buy British made weapons that are already available, since it expects that money to go back into the French economy, not to the economy of a competitor, even if the much needed weapons will arrive much later.

Which you the followed up with

> Yeah I know, UK isn't EU anymore, but the point still stands, as EU nations are still economically competitors to each other and they're not gonna spend their tax money to fund competing economies even in the EU block.

To which I responded with (just in case your ability to recall that fails you again) with

> Uh, no the point doesn't stand anymore if your example isn't actually a reflection of it - at least not anymore then any other unfounded opinion pieces with no collaborating evidence

Airbus currently has two factories finalizing the airplane assembly: one in Toulouse and one in Hamburg. You could copy this model and just open different fab in different countries to spread production.

Also, another model is one country making wafers, one country making EUV-lithography machines and parts, one country mining and refining silicon, etc.

China didn't become the manufacturing giant it is because of a single product, they did because the whole supply chain was moving there while the EU and US were only concerned about higher-margin products and activities.

I'm sure some town in Italy wishes it was still the world's #1 diode manufacturer or something.

Except that's exactly what happened. EU semi fabs like the ones in Italy mostly make diodes, mosfets, microcontrollers and other such low margin products. Nobody here tapes out GPUs and CPUs, that's all Korea, Taiwan and US.

Funding an enormously complicated semiconductor facility from a blank sheet of paper somewhere in Europe is a very expensive way to accomplish little, if the rest of the supply chain from materials to products is in non-friendly nations.

The way to bring in an industry the same way you do anything complicated: You start small. Get the specialized diode factory up and running again, and then build out supporting industries and value chains as needed. Complex lithography equipment can wait until last.

It wasn't long ago we built mobile phones in Europe. Ericsson, Nokia, Siemens, Alcatel and Bosch all had production and most if not all components were sourced from Europe or the US. Two decades ago is the blink of an eye in the larger scheme of things, not even a generation, and many who worked on this are still in their working years.

Without being directly related, it would also be a good opportunity to chisel out a crack in the Android/Apple monopoly. Then maybe in a decade or so you could actually live as a functioning citizen without giving remote root to the oligarchs and self proclaimed supranational kingmakers.

[0] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/...

If you just do nothing within half a decade or so you'll be far behind the cutting edge and at that point the decline gains its own momentum

It seems much more likely they had a suite of environmental, social and trade policies carefully calibrated to move semiconductor manufacturing somewhere else.

That's not at all how it works. You're talking as if you're buying a plug-and-play Xerox copy machine that you can just unbox and start printing copies of your work and make money.

Buying the latest EUV machines doesn't get you the latest nodes and economically viable yields.

Intel, Samsung also have the latest ASML machines that TSMC has and yet they haven't caught up to TSMC because there's a lot more to semi manufacturing that just the machine itself.

If Germany just buys an ASML machine it would be an expensive paperweight without the process know-how that engineers at TSMC have amassed over the decades in order to get the most economically competitive yields.

Even if this fab is 3 times more expensive then other ones, the result of not having one will tank the entire economy and GDP of a nation if things go bad.

We speak here about trillions of damage while a fab costs only a few billions.

This is like a complete non brainer.

That's hogwash. Sorry. Human society won't simply stop working just due to the lack of 2nm chips.

There are plenty of chip manufacturers around the world, including EU ones. Taiwan only has the quasi-monopoly over the cutting edge process.

What are you talking about? There's a lot of fabs in Europe, just on much older nodes than Taiwan, US and Japan or even China have.

>We speak here about trillions of damage

Where did you get the trillions from?

>a fab costs only a few billions

Billions just to build, but then who's gonna foot the bill for running it, if the fab is not economically competitive to those from Taiwan and Japan, at EU domestic wages, EU environmental regulations and lacking knowhow supply chains that needs to be built up in the EU? The taxpayers again?

The German government (meaning the taxpayers) are still subsidizing energy costs to keep manufacturing from collapsing or leaving the country altogether because it's not internationally competitive anymore.

So how much more of the private sector should the taxpayers subsidize before we take a look at ourselves in the mirror that everything is FUBAR and that endless taxpayer funded subsidies(aka corporate welfare) are just disguising the endemic rot while not actually fixing the problem?

We get what we deserve.

While capitalism is a good model, it needs to be kept balanced, restricted..

Shareholder primacy is ruining everything, too much influence in politics from too many external sources.

EU leaders and VCs gave up on the electronics industry 20+ years ago and just kept offshoring it to the cheapest suppliers to lower costs and increase shareholder value.

You can validate this by looking at which sectors pay the highest EU wages and you'll see that hardware and electronics are not in the top.

And working in the electronics industry requires highly skilled knowhow and academic specialization, and you're not gonna attract people there if you don't pay them top wages if they can get more money and an easier job somewhere else like writing CRUD SW or pushing pencils in a bank.

This keeps ppl locked in to the TSMC universe. The Japan and US fabs produce just a fraction of what these countries need.

> What are you going to do when none of the Taiwanese workers turn up for work, or worse they do turn up and sabotage the fab.

You’re going to offer them a lot of money, citizenship, and exfiltration of their family to turn up at work, and threaten them with lifetime in supermax if they sabotage anything.

What US judge isn’t going to allow you to do what the hell you want under national security provisions if it comes to that?

Have you seen the US security apparatus's track record at coming up with reasonable plans for what happens after the military victory? See Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.

The current US security apparatus is led by highly incompetent and corrupt people willing to sell the country down the river, so I would not count on them coming up with a plan, much less a reasonable plan, for anything.

The past is of no value in predicting the future right now.

That was before the current administration wiped out the very idea of "soft power" and put everything including NATO up for disposal.

There is, frankly, no way for anyone to trust the US again until the US undergoes steps similar to post-1945 Germany.

The U.S and Japan indeed will have less incentive to defend the sovereignty of Taiwan, but other reasons remain to ensure the statu quo remains. Purely geopolitical, not just industrial.

Realistically it's probably just that Japan is politically stable and safer than the other options in the area, while remaining fairly close to the rest of the supply chain.

They’ve become the trolls under the bridge and will squeeze every passerby for every dollar they’ve got.

The days of cheap computing have been in decline and are now dead, replaced with giga profits for this companies who managed to the the indispensable links in a chain with no or minimal competition.

Also, not sure why everyone forgets about it. People should have learned from the experience of the pandemic that the cutting-edge foundry nodes are not really the crucial ones, as being the bottleneck of industrial infrastructure. A delay of the next-gen iPhone or RTX gaming card isn't that catastrophic. But a shortage of embedded MCUs, which are actually fabricated by mature nodes, could stall the entire industrial base of a country.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/p-4nFgs9fRE

Japan can't even sell arms to Taiwan right now. Even starting selling arms would be a huge change, let alone a mutual defensive pact.

It's extremely hard to change the constitution of Japan. It's the only constitution that has never been revised since WWII. LDP has been pushing this agenda for decades and nothing really happened.

It’s easy to ignore or work around it though, just like it routinely happens for every other constitution in the world.

The process to amend the constitution of Japan [0]:

1. two thirds of the house

2. two thirds of the senate

3. referendum

LDP just won the house. IF all LDP house representatives agreed with Takaichi then she could pass the first stage. Only two left!

[0]: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E5%9B%BD%E6...

In reality no such thing happened and one YouTube video of a handful of protestors doesn’t make it so.

What she did say is that a Chinese attack on Taiwan _could_ clearly become an existential threat to Japan. Note that key word _could_

Which… of course it could!

Japan hosts multiple US military bases. If it developed into an armed conflict between the US and China then it’s exceedingly likely that Japan would be attacked. Think Chinese missiles aimed At Yokosuka, just south of Tokyo.

Not only that but Japan and China have multiple territorial disputes. It’s not hard to imagine China deciding to go all in and settle those as well.

Or defending taiwan can be PR'd into a self-defending message.

She just won a super majority in the legislature that allows her to change the constitution.

But it will happen one way or another. Taiwan's Sovereignty is completely depending on one single country, the US. It's not like that Taiwan can just say no if the US demands more diversified chip production.

For example, discounting Ukraines unwillingness to simply accept foreign rule by the country that brought them Holodomor as purely based on American propaganda and arms sales is either delusional or Russian propaganda.

Reunification with Taiwan has been a major policy goal of the CCP since the civil war and is one of Xi’s explicit policy goals. He just reaffirmed this commitment as part of his New Year’s speech.

Historically China has lacked force projection capability. However it has had a multi-decade modernisation and military build-up which has drastically changed this situation.

Further we’ve seen significant tightening of CCP control over society and in particular the military in Xi’s term.

A straight forward analysis of these events, in line with Xi’s public statements and past Chinese actions, is that the ground work is being laid for encirclement of Taiwan followed by China taking over, by force if necessary.

Literally have ongoing border disputes with practically all of their neighbors, a few of which they’ve been shooting at (India) and ramming at sea (the Philippines) in the last few years.

This was after 13 years of friendship between India and China, where India had supported China in many ways including supporting the Communists getting the UN Security Council seat reserved for China. China and India had signed a friendship pact just a few years before.

> Perhaps there are not many instances in history where one country has gone out of her way to be friendly and cooperative with the government and people of another country and to plead their cause in the councils of the world, and then that country returns evil for good

That’s how India’s PM described this barbarous act of betrayal.

This was a good demonstration of how China views its neighbours. As vassals to be brought to heel from time to time, rather than equals. And China will use violence to achieve these aims. That’s the Mao doctrine, followed by every Chinese leader since.

And before you try any nonsense of “oh that’s old news”, China is annexing Bhutan today to put pressure on India to make territorial concessions. (https://youtu.be/io8iaj0WYNI). China is annexing international waters in the South China Sea. China is attempting to annex islands controlled by Japan. China also has border disputes with Russia.

Educate yourself instead of uncritically spreading Chinese propaganda.

From Wikipedia: "There had been a series of border skirmishes between the two countries after the 1959 Tibetan uprising, when India granted asylum to the Dalai Lama. Chinese military action grew increasingly aggressive after India rejected proposed Chinese diplomatic settlements throughout 1960–1962, with China resuming previously banned "forward patrols" in Ladakh after 30 April 1962."

1- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Indian_War

Like, the centre of the world would be Asia today if Mao hadn’t needlessly (and profitlessly) trashed that goodwill.