[Udik]

> a disadvantage compared to an authoritarian regime when it comes to allocating large sums of money to arbitrary things

Please. The US has never had an issue allocating arbitrarily large amounts of money to random things- either as military spending or moonshot projects. The Apollo program costed the equivalent of about 150 billion in today's money.

[throwaway0a5e]

TSMC isn't a US company. The US can't just pump TSMC full of money without causing geopolitical problems and a overcoming internal political opposition (also true for US companies). When there's a perceived need (e.g. the Soviets beating us to space) and a huge majority approves or wants it the US can spend tons of money but this issue isn't to that point.

[FooBarWidget]

The US just forced TSMC to stop doing business with Huawei, even though Huawei was TSMC's 3rd biggest customer or so. Didn't seem like US got a lot of pushback from that.

[kevin_thibedeau]

They like getting replacement parts for their military hardware.

[yourapostasy]

CCP state-sponsored hiring of top talent from TSMC is plenty of pushback.

An ASEAN-EU-US alliance to directly source cutting-edge research from TSMC like the defense industry sourced from Silicon Valley in the early days when it was just a bunch of scattered suburbs among fruit orchards for example, would pump sufficient money to increase retention via pay and benefits. Lots of problems with that approach, of course. But options exist in Cold War II.

[FooBarWidget]

China's hiring of top experts in the semiconductor industry started waaaay before the US pressured TSMC to drop Huawei.

[yourapostasy]

Yep. US political and MIC leadership are trying to finagle Americans into a Cold War II with Russia and China, when all that is needed is business and economic disengagement if the regimes are really all that odious. The US itself lives in a glass house so it shouldn't be so eager to throw rocks.

I'm not a fan of top-down interventionist policies, they appear too brittle in a fast-moving innovative environment like we find ourselves in today. So if the US wants to stay on top of the semiconductor/AI/quantum/etc. heap, then the nation will have to find a way to make it attractive again for talent around the world to bring their families to live there. Starting with a well-educated population that uses rational cognition and fact-based decision-making would be good...