[rjzzleep]

People who don't understand what OP just wrote should look at what just happened to the South Korean semiconductor market. over 36% plunge in exports[] and that samsungs memory profit dropped 95%[].

Yes, they depend on ASML, but ASML itself was dependent on IP from TSMC engineers. TSMC already announced that they will stop applying for subsidies from the Chip Act[] in the US recently because the US keeps changing what confidential data needs to be shared with the US.

They seem to be at least slowly understanding that this is a dangerous game.

And for the people that keep talking about ASML you might well want to remember that not long ago the leadership was mocking China's capability to build their own domenstic supply chain only to flipflop shortly after saying that it would be foolish to abandon the Chinese market likely indicating that they might be concerned that their domestic supply chain might end show up faster than expected.

Taiwanese media last year was plastered with news about how the US hollowed out the Japanese semiconductor industry with its agreement in 1986 and how that will be potentially the fate of Taiwan.

But the sibling comments are correct about the potential blowback, let's not forget that the US has been talking about bombing TSMC themselves[]. I guess that probably explains why they just announced a delay to the construction of the Arizona fab.

[] https://www.koreatechtoday.com/south-koreas-semiconductor-ex...

[] https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/7/27/samsungs-profit-...

[] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/11/tsmc_chips_act/

[] https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4886681

[berkes]

> the leadership was mocking China's capability to build their own domenstic supply chain

Well, ASML is primarily and rightly very concerned that once "China" has their machines they'll attempt to reverse engineer them, ignore any western patents and IP and try to build 'Chinese chip machines'. It's happened to many industries, from Lego to fashion to hi tech. Hell, apparently there's even Chinese Knock-off Movies.

So, above everything else, there's a legitimate concern for ASML that once they move or deliver too much into China, they'll enable their own competition.

[dahwolf]

ASML's EUV machines cannot be reverse engineered.

There's over a 100K parts, several of them from exclusive suppliers. You'd have to recreate several industries from scratch or somehow bribe all suppliers. You will absolutely fail to recreate the parts at all but even then if you hypothetically would, you can't put the machine together as if it's just a few bolts. It requires a team in the know months to do it, but you're not in the know. The tolerance for error is near-zero. Installing, configuring, running the machine, both hardware and software is extraordinarily complex.

None of this is a secret. The Chinese government announced a multi-billion dollar program to try and recreate such a machine from scratch. Expected timeline is 20 years with a highly uncertain outcome.

ASML does not have a concern to export to China, they want to export to China but are pressured to not do so by the US government.

[berkes]

> ASML's EUV machines cannot be reverse engineered.

Probably not as carbon-copy. But certainly important parts, or older versions.

ASML isn't just selling a millions-dollar-machine, they sell maintenance, support, upgrades, refurbishing. All these pieces are important in themselves, not just the whole assembled machine. Any single piece that can be reversed-engineered can be a danger to their moat.

This isn't just ASML, this is any hi-tech industry. I worked in power-plants, where ABB didn't just sell us gas-turbines, they sold a package, from Swiss engineers coming twice a year to help us tune them to "we now have these nozzles that make them 1.2% more efficient in hot weather, we can come replace them". Or the story on the HN frontpage recently, where Russian airlines are running out of brakes: just imagine being, say, a Russian factory that makes, say, brakes for Tupolevs and you can reverse-engineer Airbus brakes and start making them. High margins guaranteed.

So yes: ASML is rightfully very careful with Chinese competion and espionage¹

¹ https://nos-nl.translate.goog/artikel/2280228-wat-heeft-de-c...

[ironborn123]

All what you said may be true, but ASML would still be foolish to trust and export to China, given that the latter is hell bent on copying and reverse engg its products, even if unsuccessfully for now.

Dont assist even your incompetent adversary. Competition 101.

[JumpCrisscross]

> the US has been talking about bombing TSMC themselves[]

The U.S. said nothing of the sort. One Congressman, in the minority no less, did.

[colechristensen]

Of course there is a plan somewhere for this kind of thing, that's how war works.

But an idiot fringe congressman spouting such things does not make a credible threat or say anything about the actual intentions about the country, just a good way for somebody to get attention or some points from one hardline group or another.

[coliveira]

You can say this about any US policy, until it is officially announced. It turns out that the US gov has made all the moves to weaponize Taiwan and make it the center of a war against China, so what is the surprise that they will bomb Taiwan if needed?

[BlueTemplar]

Isn't Taiwan planning to bomb itself if China invades ?

[martin8412]

Because of the geography of Taiwan, the idea is to turn Taiwan into a porcupine. Make it prohibitively expensive and deadly to try and invade. Taiwan armed to the teeth with modern American weaponry will go a long way to accomplish that.

[oblio]

> People who don't understand what OP just wrote should look at what just happened to the South Korean semiconductor market. over 36% plunge in exports[] and that samsungs memory profit dropped 95%.

Is demand for electronics finally dropping? I want to be able to buy a 3 year old Nvidia low-range GPU at below MSRP...

[nottorp]

I've been forwarded this piece of apparently bad news recently:

https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/report-nvidia-has-practic...

So I wouldn't hold my breath.

[BlueTemplar]

Why would people not just buy AMD GPUs instead ? It's not like they are much worse, in fact last I checked it was Nvidia GPUs that were problematic if you had Linux in mind !

[mordae]

I have "ancien"t Vega 64 and I enjoy a lot of recent games with Lutris and Steam.

[stefanfisk]

One reason is CUDA.

[sangnoir]

> Is demand for electronics finally dropping?

Unfortunately, it is likely to be limited to flash storage. The $/GB value has fallen to historic lows for all manner of solid-state storage devices.

[strbean]

Wasn't there a whole DRAM price fixing cartel that blew up recently?

[photochemsyn]

The stated reason for delaying the fab construction is a lack of skilled labor in the USA, which does make sense - that's what happens when you hollow out domestic manufacturing in the name of increased corporate profits from outsourcing.

> "“There is an insufficient amount of skilled workers” with the expertise to build a chip factory, TSMC chairman Mark Liu complained during a call with analysts. The executive warned the company might have to fly in “experienced technicians from Taiwan to train the local skilled workers for a short period of time.”"

https://fortune.com/2023/07/21/tsmc-complains-cant-find-enou...

[coredog64]

Insufficient at the price TSMC is willing to pay for all those hours.

The neighborhood around ASU in Tempe, AZ is chock full of fabs that have been built or expanded recently. Please take the “hollowed out workforce” to a different discussion where it actually applies.

[gsatic]

All this while demand is not growing like it once was. Lot of these projects will bomb. And the west doesnt have docile easy to dominate labour that east asia has. They will never achieve the same margins. And as soon as China-Taiwan chapter is over, corporate robots will happily return.

[littlestymaar]

> And as soon as China-Taiwan chapter is over

That's a very strong prerequisite though… It may not be over for several decades to come.

[gsatic]

After what happened to hong kong, its hard to believe that.

[littlestymaar]

No offense but there's no possible comparison between the two, and comparing the situations only highlight your lack of understanding of the situations:

- Hong Kong belonged to China already, it just had a special status that was supposed to expire at some point, Xi “just” went ahead of schedule but there wasn't anything to stop him from doing so (no independent HK government, no army, etc)

- Taiwan is a complete state, with a government and an army, a navy and an air force equipped with Western and mordern home-grown equipment, cruise missiles and anti-ship missiles and so on. Without a Western direct armed intervention, Taiwan is almost always expected to fall after a few weeks by Western military analysts (though the same analysts also expected Ukraine to be unable to match Russia on conventional battles), but even the current predictions on Taiwan suggests that China will pay a signifiy cost in terms of casualties and and material even if they succeeded eventually. And again the success assumes no military actions from the West. Of course Xi may take his chance anyway, but the situation would still be incomparable to HK.

[baybal2]

> Hong Kong belonged to China already, it just had a special status that was supposed to expire at some point

Hong Kong was leased to the British Crown in the perpetuity.

[Affric]

This is a bad faith comment.

The new territories had a 99 year lease and in 1997 had more than 2 million Hong Kongers living there. About a third of the population.

[sparrowInHand]

If there was a spark of integrity left, a whole generation would step back from there posts in lock and file out of the building. Not a grey hair to be found after the whole Neo-Lib-Con episode.