[mrtksn]

What happens if Samsung and SK Hynix simply stop selling to US at all? Micron is in US but are the rest still in the US jurisdiction?

They are selling the hottest commodity of the day. It’s made outside of the US using non-American tooling.

[mywittyname]

Micron is forced to stop under-investing in plants and will increase production. This will trigger everyone else to expand production and lower prices.

The whole point of the collusion is to ensure everyone is producing the same volumes and keeping prices high. The company that expands is the company that "wins" because memory is a volume game and it's all about hanging on the longest during the glut. So once one company expands, the rest have a choice of expanding or planning their exit.

If Samsung and SK lose access to the US market, they'd be fucked long term. Micron would kill them selling at higher margins and higher volumes in the USDM, while the rest are stuck competing for the international scraps - markets Micron is also allowed to compete in, if they wanted to.

[GeekyBear]

Oddly enough, Samsung and SK Hynix decided that they needed to expand production on the same day another lawsuit accused them of colluding to keep production low and prices high.

> South Korea announces $520bn chip plant project with Samsung, SK Hynix

https://asia.nikkei.com/business/tech/semiconductors/south-k...

[freefaler]

Or may be they just need to produce more, because the demand is higher than expected and looks like it will stay high to recoup their investment?

[PunchyHamster]

> The company that expands is the company that "wins" because memory is a volume game and it's all about hanging on the longest during the glut. So once one company expands, the rest have a choice of expanding or planning their exit.

No? Cost to produce won't be cheaper just because you have 5 fabs instead of 4. Economies of scale at some level just flatten out so company that chooses to not expand will just enjoy the same level of profit instead of increase

[ksec]

>It’s made outside of the US using non-American tooling.

Depends if US can demand ASML which uses plenty of US tech inside. In reality even the DRAM and NAND supply chain has plenty of US technologies.

And you say Micron are US but they have lots of Fabs in Japan as well since they acquired Elpida.

[mrtksn]

Everyone is using something from someone, you can even argue that US owes India and Europe huge compensation because pretty much everything US did in the last half century was made using technology or people funded by those people. Johny Ive is British, Almost all the AI stuff is created by Europeans, Israelis, and Canadians - thus funded by their respective taxpayers.

The thing about the US losing its grip on the world and the collapse of the global world order means that the words on the paper don't mean much. Embargoes on Russia didn't mean much so Europeans are physically taking over their ships and Ukrainians are physically sinking the rest of their ships. In Iran nothing other than physically sinking ships and blowing up places meant anything.

Europeans can ship EUV machines because they are physically building them for people who will use these to physically build the most valuable products currently there is. US wasn't able to enforce its will to Iran, what if Koreans, Europeans and the Chinese decide that its not into their interest to act according to US courts?

[kurthr]

The collapse of global trade would greatly reduce economic efficiency, output, and investment. It has been coming for while, though greatly accelerated by the orange pdf file. It takes a lot longer to build systems of trust and belief in enforcements of global order than to disrupt them. I suppose we'll move closer to the fear side of the financial/political axis from the greed side.

[ksec]

If history is any guidelines that would be how World War III starts.

There is nothing that stops US from building their own Memory Fabs, or asking / funding Micron building more US Fabs. It will cost a more, but the complexity is certainly no where near replicating TSMC.

[mrtksn]

US is in a very advantageous position regarding geography and resources but its problem is that its geared towards having access to the whole worlds markets. Apple, Google etc. are all possible because they server billions of people, not just 350M. IMHO US will have serious internal trouble for years, eventually stabilizing and being a nice place again.

[charcircuit]

>Apple, Google etc. are all possible because they server billions of people, not just 350M

Most of their revenue comes from America. Not all countries have the same profit margin per user.

[mrtksn]

Not true, less than half of Apple’s revenue is from US, %42 last year. Europe is %26, China %16.

[reylas]

You are going to have to cite more for those claims. Steve Jobs was born in San Francisco. He is as Syrian as Trump is.

This is as biased an Anti-US take as any. Will not grace the rest of the claims with a response.

[dominotw]

> Steve Jobs is Syrian

lol he is not. at no point was he a syrian. his mom was from ohio or something.

[Danox]

Steve Jobs’s dad, his biological dad, is Syrian, and he may still be alive because he outlived his son lived in northern Nevada, Steve’s circumstances somewhat similar to Barack Obama, where two college students in the fifties early sixties, who were unmarried had an unexpected pregnancy.

Note Steve’s biological mom and biological dad, the Syrian, kept their second child, a girl, and Steve even met her later on in life.

[Danox]

Then Samsung, Hyundai, LG, Kia would go bye-bye in the United States. I think the current memory fiasco will be their last big payday, so they should enjoy it while they can. There will be many companies that will rethink how they approach memory going into the future.

[bilekas]

> What happens if Samsung and SK Hynix simply stop selling to US at all? Micron is in US but are the rest still in the US jurisdiction?

They would lose access to their largest market, I'm sure shareholders would havesomething to say about that ?

[mrtksn]

The market is the AI boom and the US is the host, they can sell the exact same stuff to someone else. What are the capitalists who fund the AI build up do? Invest in SaaS when they can't buy chips? I bet if something like that happens the chip manufacturers wouldn't end up with product they have no one to sell to.

[bilekas]

> The market is the AI boom and the US is the host, they can sell the exact same stuff to someone else.

In theory yeah, but not at the levels that the US companies are buying.. Last I heard OpenAI is sitting on 50% of the world useless wafers on their own for some reason, and Microsoft cant find a datacenter fast enough to plug their stock in.

I'm a customer, looking for a simple 32GB ddr5 6000 ram, I'm now competing with Microsoft because there isn't enough supply? I'm not sure about that.

[dist-epoch]

US is the vast majority of their market - Apple, hyper-scalers, AI labs

[mrtksn]

Why can't they just buy the exact same product and install it in Kazakhstan or somewhere else?

[myrmidon]

The RAM buyers have no interest in entertaining something like that because their revenue comes mainly from the US, too.

Corporations avoid picking fights with large nations where lots of revenue comes from for very obvious reasons.

[mrtksn]

So in other words, if Koreans and Europeans decide not to sell their stuff to America,quits the AI race and the capitalist do something else instead? I don't think so, in the hypothetical world where Korea and Europe don't sell to US, the American money that is invested in AI will go wherever they can actually build it, the people who are using these machines to build those models are mostly immigrants anyway.

[myrmidon]

If Koreans/Europeans decide not to sell their stuff, some of the money would go into circumventing the ban:

1) This is not good for Korean/Europen sellers, because it negatively affects sales volume, and is unlikely to be compensated by margins, because a good chunk of those will go towards circumvention instead of the original seller.

2) Some more money will go towards replacing those sellers completely. This is extra not good from the sellers perspective.

[mrtksn]

In this new world there are more important things like nationalism, the ego of the politicians and the personal ambitions of the super rich. Bot being good idea is irrelevant.

[SpicyLemonZest]

I don't understand what this hypothetical world is supposed to be. Samsung and SK Hynix are run by Korean capitalists who want to sell their stuff to America; the reasons you're describing are precisely why they would not exit the American market just to dodge an inconvenient antitrust investigation.

[russli1993]

And hyper-scalers, Apple, AI labs all will die if memory makers can't sell to them?

[craigjb]

Applied Materials, Lam Research, and KLA are all U.S. companies. ASML supplies lithography, but hundreds of other tools come from these companies.

[russli1993]

memory is a commodity is laughable. Then software engineering is even more a commodity, the amount of engineering going into making memory chips the vast majority of people don't understand. There are a lot of software engineers getting this field after leetcoding and copy from hellointerview. Claude can write you an app in 30 minutes. Try build a lpddr5 dram chip in 30 minutes. Manufacturing know how itself is a specialty and barrier to entry.

[Danox]

It’s a barrier, but not an insurmountable barrier. Most of the companies are somewhat lazy and somewhat cheap, but if circumstances change in the market, that make it untenable, they will take on making their own memory or making arrangements with someone else.

It’s been done with processors, modems, SSDs and many other specialized chips. The design and engineering part can already be done at several companies, they just elect not to do anything on the fab side. But they will, if they have to in the long run.

It takes two to four years and Five to twenty billion dollars. Some of the bigger companies, if pushed, particularly, if the alternative is getting chips from China, will do something on the fab side if they absolutely have to. They probably won’t live with the current conditions forever.

There was a company that had three companies say no over about 10 years, eventually, they made a decision to build their own processor known as the M-series…

[mschuster91]

> It takes two to four years and Five to twenty billion dollars. Some of the bigger companies, if pushed, particularly, if the alternative is getting chips from China, will do something on the fab side if they absolutely have to. They probably won’t live with the current conditions forever.

The problem is... the market consolidated into this oligopoly for a reason. Memory and storage have gone through so, so many pork cycles over the decades.

To make it worse: even if you had the money, ASML is booked out fully for years. You won't get the lithography gear.

[dist-epoch]

So where are the German/France/UK/Australia/Turkey/Italy companies getting into this extremely profitable RAM business?

[AngryData]

I mean your view isn't flawless but overall I agree. Too many people think building things amount to spending money and completely overlook the thousands of people required who are not just unskilled labor hired off the street.

[zuzululu]

regime change in South Korea. President Lee Jae Myung isn't exactly popular among Washington circles

[soraminazuki]

In the region are Japan, Taiwan, China, Russia, and North Korea. Only incompetent idiots at the highest level of power would start off a whole new geopolitical disaster there by stabbing an ally, of all things. Who in the right mind would do such a ... ohhhh.