China stole some TSMC tech secrets, which implies they are trying to duplicate the technology. If successful, TSMC (and Taiwan) will lose much of their relevance. It seems like a conservative-prudent move.
China stole some TSMC tech secrets, which implies they are trying to duplicate the technology. If successful, TSMC (and Taiwan) will lose much of their relevance. It seems like a conservative-prudent move.
Nah.
China is always stealing, and has been trying super hard to break into high end semiconductor manufacturing for many years now, and always failed.
AMD/Nvidia/Intel/Apple design the chips.
TSMC manufactures them.
ASML - a Dutch company - is the only company in the world capable of making the machines which TSMC buys and uses to actually make the chips.
Here is an archive link of a Vox (I know) short video explaining why China has no shot at breaking into high end chips any time soon: https://youtu.be/Uh4QGey2zTk
The tldr is that (1) actually developing these capabilities is insanely hard and known only to a handful of people spread across multiple western countries, (2) you can't just steal 1 step, you need ALL the steps, and (3) every time China steals shit, it gets nut punched with sanctions which make its further attempts much more difficult.
The United States could basically shut down the whole Chinese tech economy with a word. It has already done so for some individual Chinese companies, crushing them. If the US imposed a chip ban on China, basically every Chinese tech company would implode and become 100% dependent on importing foreign finished products and services with 0 hope of escaping dependency. This is going to be the true future and the true flex that the US has never fully used yet. It's been partially done against Russia, but Russia is getting around it through China. If the US does it to China, China is fucked.
China has made US investors its bitch. Blackrock is a subservient pawn to the CCP. The bastards on Wall Street and the retarded CEOs (read, ALL CEOs) have built an economy so dependent on Chinese manufacturing that China could crush the US by stopping all pharmaceutical exports to the US.
The US is in an economic cold war with China, though US politicians and the elite seem to be more than happy to bend over for Chinese funny money. They have no problems allowing China to destroy the environment around the world as long as the pooh-bucks keep rolling in.
China could crush the US by stopping all pharmaceutical exports to the US.
That's nonsense. China is only a minority of US pharma imports, and even that is only for generics, which are very low profit margin since they can be made by anyone, and consequently super easy to replace with other countries. All US pharma imports from China could be easily replaced by India, for example. The US imports a lot from China, India, Mexico, and Canada. China has no special pharma leverage over the US.
though US politicians and the elite seem to be more than happy to bend over for Chinese funny money.
That is changing. Biden has not repealed Trump's tariffs against China, and Pelosi visited Taiwan. While the Democrats are generally soft on China, a Republican will win in 2024 and I expect him to crack down on China.
You can steal the tech but they own the designs and manufacturing technique, they (ASML and TMSC) will sue your ass. China don't care, they'll do the bare minimum to avoid sanctions while developing their own semiconductor technology and when it's ready they'll mass produce and tell you to fuck off.
We have known things are going to get worse between the US and China for a long time. Joe Biden is basically on China's payroll (look up Jho Low and Pras Michel) so we have been in a holding pattern where Biden refuses to do what needs to be done, but everyone knows that a Republican is going to win in 2024, and that Republican - no matter who it is - is going to kick China hard in the nuts.
Buffet might have made a lot of good calls over his long career, but he also famously made many bad ones in the last 20 years, totally missing the rise of tech stocks, for example. He's openly admitted this.
Buffet's TSMC play was a short term pump and dump. "In the third quarter of 2022, Berkshire purchased 60 million shares in semiconductor manufacturing company TSMC, acquiring a $4.1 billion stake.[124] Berkshire divested 86.2% of its stake by the next quarter." As soon as he bought in, the stock price shot up, so he sold. Makes it easy to make money when the mere news you bought into a company can make it go from $60 to $97 in a few months. And now that he sold, the stock is dropping.
I don't think it had anything to do with China. I just think he thought it was undervalued at $60-70 and then when it went to $80+ he thought it was overvalued and dumped it to all the people wanting to chase his trade. It's easy to make money when you can take money off of normies thanks to your reputation like that.
China stole some TSMC tech secrets, which implies they are trying to duplicate the technology. If successful, TSMC (and Taiwan) will lose much of their relevance. It seems like a conservative-prudent move.
Nah.
China is always stealing, and has been trying super hard to break into high end semiconductor manufacturing for many years now, and always failed.
AMD/Nvidia/Intel/Apple design the chips.
TSMC manufactures them.
ASML - a Dutch company - is the only company in the world capable of making the machines which TSMC buys and uses to actually make the chips.
Here is an archive link of a Vox (I know) short video explaining why China has no shot at breaking into high end chips any time soon: https://youtu.be/Uh4QGey2zTk
The tldr is that (1) actually developing these capabilities is insanely hard and known only to a handful of people spread across multiple western countries, (2) you can't just steal 1 step, you need ALL the steps, and (3) every time China steals shit, it gets nut punched with sanctions which make its further attempts much more difficult.
The United States could basically shut down the whole Chinese tech economy with a word. It has already done so for some individual Chinese companies, crushing them. If the US imposed a chip ban on China, basically every Chinese tech company would implode and become 100% dependent on importing foreign finished products and services with 0 hope of escaping dependency. This is going to be the true future and the true flex that the US has never fully used yet. It's been partially done against Russia, but Russia is getting around it through China. If the US does it to China, China is fucked.
China has made US investors its bitch. Blackrock is a subservient pawn to the CCP. The bastards on Wall Street and the retarded CEOs (read, ALL CEOs) have built an economy so dependent on Chinese manufacturing that China could crush the US by stopping all pharmaceutical exports to the US. The US is in an economic cold war with China, though US politicians and the elite seem to be more than happy to bend over for Chinese funny money. They have no problems allowing China to destroy the environment around the world as long as the pooh-bucks keep rolling in.
That's nonsense. China is only a minority of US pharma imports, and even that is only for generics, which are very low profit margin since they can be made by anyone, and consequently super easy to replace with other countries. All US pharma imports from China could be easily replaced by India, for example. The US imports a lot from China, India, Mexico, and Canada. China has no special pharma leverage over the US.
That is changing. Biden has not repealed Trump's tariffs against China, and Pelosi visited Taiwan. While the Democrats are generally soft on China, a Republican will win in 2024 and I expect him to crack down on China.
This and 'smart' products are taking a bath. We don't need as many chips.
Then can we steal their secrets they stole from TSMC?
You can steal the tech but they own the designs and manufacturing technique, they (ASML and TMSC) will sue your ass. China don't care, they'll do the bare minimum to avoid sanctions while developing their own semiconductor technology and when it's ready they'll mass produce and tell you to fuck off.
TSMC is building a fab in Nevada, so it's underway.
TSMC was the only game in town so could extract huge profit and since it's so involved it takes a long time for the market to correct.
But now the invisible hand is about to bitch-slap them with new Samsung and Intel semiconductor factories coming online in a year or so.
We have known things are going to get worse between the US and China for a long time. Joe Biden is basically on China's payroll (look up Jho Low and Pras Michel) so we have been in a holding pattern where Biden refuses to do what needs to be done, but everyone knows that a Republican is going to win in 2024, and that Republican - no matter who it is - is going to kick China hard in the nuts.
Buffet might have made a lot of good calls over his long career, but he also famously made many bad ones in the last 20 years, totally missing the rise of tech stocks, for example. He's openly admitted this.
Buffet's TSMC play was a short term pump and dump. "In the third quarter of 2022, Berkshire purchased 60 million shares in semiconductor manufacturing company TSMC, acquiring a $4.1 billion stake.[124] Berkshire divested 86.2% of its stake by the next quarter." As soon as he bought in, the stock price shot up, so he sold. Makes it easy to make money when the mere news you bought into a company can make it go from $60 to $97 in a few months. And now that he sold, the stock is dropping.
I don't think it had anything to do with China. I just think he thought it was undervalued at $60-70 and then when it went to $80+ he thought it was overvalued and dumped it to all the people wanting to chase his trade. It's easy to make money when you can take money off of normies thanks to your reputation like that.