The flip side of this is that hackers can brick the same machines…
Depends how its set up. So long as it’s fully independent and disconnected from existing digital infrastructure it should be safer. It could be as simple as explosives hard-wired with a buried line running up into some bunker up in the mountains.
So long as it’s fully independent and disconnected from existing digital infrastructure it should be safer.
It’s a puzzle, because anything with too many safety features can be easily disarmed. But anything with too few can be prematurely detonated.
Imagine what happens to the Taiwanese economy if there’s a Chinese feint or false alarm and the facility bricks itself. A massive economic downturn would not work to the benefit of an island so heavily reliant on foreign trade.
Why the hell would they advertise this is beyond me…
My understanding is that some of the benefits China would get from invading Taiwan is the control of Taiwan’s world-leading semiconductor industry. So making it public knowledge that any invading force (i.e. China) would not be able to take over their production capabilities is a small deterrent.
Taiwan’s world-leading semiconductor industry
China already produces over 50% of the world’s semiconductors.
i assume by disable they probably mean, something along the lines of irreversibly contaminating the whole of the assembly line.
I’d be curious to know how specifically they’re going about this.
What happened if… purely hypothetically… China develops competitive chip fabrication plants that exports at scales rivalrious to Taiwan.
And then fear of an invasion provokes detonation of Taiwan’s own facilities.
Wouldn’t this turn China into a domestically source monopoly of high end chips?
The US will rebuild their chip manufacturing somewhere else
Israel grants Intel $3.2 billion for new $25 billion chip plant
But Intel has long since fallen behind the pack of semiconductor manufacturers. If they could just do their own Taiwanese foundry, they’d have done it by now and reaped comparable boosts in revenue.
As it stands, China is the majority manufacturer of semiconductors - responsible for more than half of all chips produced - because they’re building foundries far faster and at higher quality than their American peers at Intel.
Taiwan is the only country keeping pace with China. Losing them would only strengthen the Chinese export market.
As it stands, China is the majority manufacturer of semiconductors - responsible for more than half of all chips produced - because they’re building foundries far faster and at higher quality than their American peers at Intel.
the reason why they produce half of all semi conductors, probably has more to do with the type of semi conductors they produce, mainly IC chips. As opposed to things like CPUs and GPUs, they’ve only recently started getting into that space. The intels and TSMCs of the world produce highly optimized designs and fab processes specifically for things like CPUs and GPUs.
A chip with 8 and gates on it is probably vastly easier to produce than an 8088 cpu, for example.
probably has more to do with the type of semi conductors they produce, mainly IC chips
The Rise of China GPU Makers: AI and Tech Sovereignty Drive New GPU Entrants
Two of the new Chinese companies have hired ex AMD and Nvidia architects to start their GPU companies, and another two use Img.
It’s easier said than done. A few key pieces took decades to figure out and even now many can only be produced by one or two companies, like ASML.
SMIC makes 5nm chips and is on the cusp of 3nm.
Marketing terms mean nothing. SMIC’s nodes are nowhere near the real transistor density of TSMC’s or even Intel’s.
But what’s worse than that are the yields. I don’t believe we have public numbers on their newest node yet, but their self-reported yields on their “7nm” process as of late 2022 was a pathetic 10-15%. TSMC’s 7nm yield (and you should remember that TSMC’s 7nm is vastly superior to SMIC’s) was getting over 70% yield when it was in pre-production trialing.
In that case, I guess there’s no problem and Taiwan will maintain semiconductor supremacy forever
Not what I said, but thank you for contributing that strawman to the conversation.
The Chinese firms are end running US sanctions with improved technologies and your response seems to be “But their chips aren’t as good so it doesn’t count”.
Nevermind the rapid pace of development or the fact that only TSMC and Samsung seems capable of matching it.
The idea that Chinese manufacturers need Taiwan is demonstrably false.
The question is if their remote disable will be triggered before the US blows the factory up anyway.
Just add some brown people and throw a wedding. The factory will be leveled within hours.
You know what doesn’t convince people to rethink how they view America, or empire?
Arbitrarily inserting comments like that into topics where they’re disconnected and off topic.
Wait a minute…are you a DoD contractor whose mission it is to make any critic of America look whiney and detached from reality?
He’s not wrong is he though? And besides, what is Taiwan besides an American client state?
Mitch McConnell’s wife and Trump’s Secretary of Labor - Elaine Chao - is from a family of enormously wealthy Taiwanese shipping magnets.
California is flush with Taiwanese-born politicians, business owners, and investors.
Taiwanese’s ruling class goes to school in the US, owns property in the US, and has a very friendly relationship with the American financial system.
I would put them more on par with Israel than, say, the Philippines or some Latin American Banana Republic. They’ve got much more influence over us than a traditional client state like Puerto Rico or Guam.
This is a good thing, but it’s hardly unique. Any advanced manufacturing facility will have remote access to their equipment in case an operator needs reconfigure it, transfer data, or in this case if they’re invaded by Lesser Taiwan.
China should just replicate Taiwan somewhere like they replicate Paris, Venice, etc. and call it a day.
China already had 53% global market share in semiconductors back in 2020
