[javajosh]

The US has an overabundance of brilliant physics PhDs most of which are probably pretty sick of academia's bullshit at this point. Let's give 2000 of them a 100k/year job plus $5B, cheap/free access to federal land, energy, and water, and see what kind of fab(s) they could make. I bet they'd get to TSMC's level pretty quick. If we offered Taiwan a mutual defense pact, we might even get their help to get there.

[qbasic_forever]

They'll turn it down because they can make $250k a year writing code for Facebook/Google/etc.

And it's really more talent in process engineering that you need, not in the physics of chip building. We already know what has to be done to make transistors. It's the how to do it at scale and with high enough yield that's impressively difficult.

[javajosh]

Haha. No way. I don't think anyone who gets a physics PhD is excited by the prospect of solving ad market problems. Or financial market problems (because you forgot to mention the $500k quant jobs). Physics PhDs aren't, in my experience, particularly motivated by money. How could they be?

A project like this would a) let them use far more of their training than coding ever would and b) it is for a good cause, effectively a peaceful version of the Manhattan project.

[mikebike]

You might want to check the bio of Antonio García Martí­nez, who has a physics background, and subsequently worked in both finance and adtech.

[an_opabinia]

This is the right idea. But like I said, most of the value is in exploiting cheap Chinese labor, not the chips, which is why really none of that would work accounting wise - like you’re talking about a valuable economic enterprise but not one that would produce a lot of profits for shareholders.