| Once the chip shortage happened, partially due to geopolitical reasons, that changed everything. The West/US will never fully rely on a single point of failure again no matter how hard the HBS MBAs and Chicago thinking push it to trim and be "efficient". Some industries are too important for other industries and leverage on that over those areas is too risky and costly now. I'd pay double right now for GPUs directly from the source, not from some sketchy third party. Right now our EV/auto, space and even AR/XR industries as well as gaming and everything that requires chips, we are at the mercy of an external market that has a slant against the West. It will take some years to get out but we'll never not expect that in the future again. If costs go up costs go up, but availability should never be allowed to be used as leverage again, that is too risky and too costly long term. Availability that is reliable is always more important than efficiency or cost, because right now lack of availability is costing lots of extra time that has the potential to lose entire industries, that is not acceptable in any way. Very little margin and too much optimization/efficiency is bad for resilience. Couple that with private equity backed near entire market leverage monopolies/duopolies/oligopolies that control necessary supply and you have trouble. HBS is even realizing too much optimization/efficiency is a bad thing. The slack/margin is squeezed out and with that, an ability to change vectors quickly. It is the large company/startup agility difference with the added weight of physical/expensive manufacturing. The High Price of Efficiency, Our Obsession with Efficiency Is Destroying Our Resilience [1] > Superefficient businesses create the potential for social disorder. > A superefficient dominant model elevates the risk of catastrophic failure. > *If a system is highly efficient, odds are that efficient players will game it.* Hopefully that same mistake is not made in the future. It will take time to build up diversification of market leverage in terms of chips for availability. Hopefully we have learned our lesson about too much concentration, with that comes leverage and sometimes a "gaming" of the market. This chip shortage, and all the supply chain problems during the pandemic as well, will hopefully introduce more wisdom and knowledge into business institutions that just because things are ok while being overly super efficient, that is almost a bigger risk than higher prices/costs. Competition is a leverage reducer. Margin is a softer ride even if the profit margins aren't as big. [1] https://hbr.org/2019/01/the-high-price-of-efficiency |