Eh, I don’t think that anecdote is relevant. The production pipeline for cotton is extremely simple in comparison: add lots of manual labor plus land fertile for cotton and you get cotton. Many places on Earth would have fit that bill in those times.
The US government can’t allow the Chinese to have absolute power and control over the technology that the _world_ runs on. It’s an existential threat.
Can you imagine, at the height of the Cold War, the US outsourcing nuke construction to the Soviet Union?
I’m pretty sure the Taiwanese factories are rigged to go, or at least those factories will be destroyed in the event of an invasion. Plus it’ll be easy to sanction China and prevent them from acquiring new fab tech to rebuild the factories.
I’m pretty sure the US is ok with the world being set backwards a bit in tech if they get to reacquire chip leadership. A more cynical person could suggest that the US is agitating for a war in order to precipitate this very outcome.
An even more cynical person (me) would suggest that the democrat party is facing a pretty tough mid term, and nothing gets voters to back the part in charge more than a good old fashion conflict...
The cynical person in me says none of them care or even think about trade, tech leadership, or anything beyond retaining power in the next election
How long do you think it will take, in this scenario, for local US fabs to reach parity with TSMC? Intel has been trying for a decade. AMD is a TSMC customer.
Your scenario only makes sense if the US was almost on the verge of achieving technological parity with TSMC, say within months or maybe a couple of years. But that is not the case. Heck, building a fab from scratch takes longer than that. What happens in the interim? And what happens to the rest of the world? The disruption on a global scale would make the pandemic look mild.
The main problem with building the factories in the US is doing it cheaply enough to remain competitive. When the competition is destroyed that is no longer a problem.
The rest of us will just have to get used to paying more for less.
Just because something is incredibly destructive doesn’t mean politicians won’t do it. I’m sure many people would like to punish TSMC customers for not buying American in the first place.
Chip manufacturing is probably the most value added industry in the world, while simultaneously being absurdly automated. If you can't make them in the US because of costs there is nothing you can make in the US.
The US government can’t allow the Chinese to have absolute power and control over the technology that the _world_ runs on. It’s an existential threat.
Can you imagine, at the height of the Cold War, the US outsourcing nuke construction to the Soviet Union?