ASML Holding and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. have ways to disable the world’s most advanced chip-making machines in the event that China invades Taiwan, according to people familair with the matter.
no, you’re thinking about it wrong. The whole point of a doomsday machine is useless if it’s countered by simply being known about.
China knowing how TSMC has their delete key working, shouldn’t make a fucking difference, on whether or not it works. If it does, it’s not a very good delete key, because china probably already knows how it works, as well as the US.
Or, this sounds like tactical planning in case of an invasion, to prevent access of valuable resources to the invaders. Making it “need to know” makes perfect sense.
yeah but that’s the problem though. It shouldn’t matter, why do you think the US is public about where it’s nuclear reactors are located?
Why do you think every country with nuclear weapons is open about having them? It’s not because it’s a detriment if others know about it, it’s a detriment if others have them.
China knowing about it merely makes it a MAD system. China knowing how it works would ensure that it’s almost impossible for them to actually take over the plant, assuming TSMC isn’t hiring idiots to run opsec.
true, you could just blast the ever living shit out the circuitry, rendering it completely non functional. That’s another good one for sensors and shit as well.
Marketing terms mean nothing. SMIC’s nodes are nowhere near the real transistor density of TSMC’s or even Intel’s.
But what’s worse than that are the yields. I don’t believe we have public numbers on their newest node yet, but their self-reported yields on their “7nm” process as of late 2022 was a pathetic 10-15%. TSMC’s 7nm yield (and you should remember that TSMC’s 7nm is vastly superior to SMIC’s) was getting over 70% yield when it was in pre-production trialing.
The Chinese firms are end running US sanctions with improved technologies and your response seems to be “But their chips aren’t as good so it doesn’t count”.
Nevermind the rapid pace of development or the fact that only TSMC and Samsung seems capable of matching it.
The idea that Chinese manufacturers need Taiwan is demonstrably false.
No, I was dismissing your assertion that Chinese fab companies are at the same level, or ahead of, TSMC. The truth is they aren’t even close. This is something that even China themselves openly admit.
That’s a second time you’ve strawmanned me. I don’t appreciate words being put in my mouth.
Samsung? I’m sorry, are you keeping up with the industry at all? Samsung isn’t matching shit. They’re a node behind Intel and 2.5 behind TSMC. What development are they matching?
And yes, a multitude of Chinese manufacturers do need Taiwan. China in general does. Will that be true in the far future? Who knows. But it’s certainly true now and in the short term.
well for one, it would take probably 10 or 20 years to get to that point in chinas domestic manufacturing. As well as geopolitical situation.
They would have very little reason to invade taiwan at that point. So they probably wouldn’t.
And to foil your plan a little bit, the US has spent billions of dollars in recent years constructing new TSMC and i believe intel fabs in america, there’s a big one in arizona. And idk where the other one is off the top of my head. But we’re already chinas biggest competition in that regard.
i guess but even then it would still have massive political implications, including the US, which is incredibly messy. And taiwan itself wouldn’t be very happy about it.
Extrinsic factors are the most important ones for this kind of stuff, it’s why the vietnam war failed for us.
i assume by disable they probably mean, something along the lines of irreversibly contaminating the whole of the assembly line.
I’d be curious to know how specifically they’re going about this.
Ok winnie the pooh, like they are going to tell you
i mostly asked because other people would almost certainly have better ideas.
Besides, if whatever they’re doing wouldn’t stand up to “being public knowledge” it’s not a very sound plan lmao.
“The whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost if you keep it a secret!”
no, you’re thinking about it wrong. The whole point of a doomsday machine is useless if it’s countered by simply being known about.
China knowing how TSMC has their delete key working, shouldn’t make a fucking difference, on whether or not it works. If it does, it’s not a very good delete key, because china probably already knows how it works, as well as the US.
You need to watch Dr. Strangelove or: how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb by Stanley Kubrik friend.
probably, i’m just repeating standard rules of security practice though. If it’s only secure because someone doesn’t know about it. It’s not secure.
I highly doubt TSMC is doing anything less than the state of the art practices with regards to this problem.
Or, this sounds like tactical planning in case of an invasion, to prevent access of valuable resources to the invaders. Making it “need to know” makes perfect sense.
yeah but that’s the problem though. It shouldn’t matter, why do you think the US is public about where it’s nuclear reactors are located?
Why do you think every country with nuclear weapons is open about having them? It’s not because it’s a detriment if others know about it, it’s a detriment if others have them.
China knowing about it merely makes it a MAD system. China knowing how it works would ensure that it’s almost impossible for them to actually take over the plant, assuming TSMC isn’t hiring idiots to run opsec.
I’m really hoping for thermite. A lot of thermite.
thermites a good one, not quite instantaneous, but still pretty good.
Would certainly be a good counter for hardware.
They could probably overload the circuitry to make it unusable. Or use like, IDK, mini explosives?
true, you could just blast the ever living shit out the circuitry, rendering it completely non functional. That’s another good one for sensors and shit as well.
Probably wipe the firmware of the machines so they can’t be used.
(Fun fact: FIRMware is the in-between of HARDware and SOFTware.)
moderately chubbed ware
What happened if… purely hypothetically… China develops competitive chip fabrication plants that exports at scales rivalrious to Taiwan.
And then fear of an invasion provokes detonation of Taiwan’s own facilities.
Wouldn’t this turn China into a domestically source monopoly of high end chips?
It’s easier said than done. A few key pieces took decades to figure out and even now many can only be produced by one or two companies, like ASML.
SMIC makes 5nm chips and is on the cusp of 3nm.
Marketing terms mean nothing. SMIC’s nodes are nowhere near the real transistor density of TSMC’s or even Intel’s.
But what’s worse than that are the yields. I don’t believe we have public numbers on their newest node yet, but their self-reported yields on their “7nm” process as of late 2022 was a pathetic 10-15%. TSMC’s 7nm yield (and you should remember that TSMC’s 7nm is vastly superior to SMIC’s) was getting over 70% yield when it was in pre-production trialing.
In that case, I guess there’s no problem and Taiwan will maintain semiconductor supremacy forever
Not what I said, but thank you for contributing that strawman to the conversation.
The Chinese firms are end running US sanctions with improved technologies and your response seems to be “But their chips aren’t as good so it doesn’t count”.
Nevermind the rapid pace of development or the fact that only TSMC and Samsung seems capable of matching it.
The idea that Chinese manufacturers need Taiwan is demonstrably false.
No, I was dismissing your assertion that Chinese fab companies are at the same level, or ahead of, TSMC. The truth is they aren’t even close. This is something that even China themselves openly admit.
That’s a second time you’ve strawmanned me. I don’t appreciate words being put in my mouth.
Samsung? I’m sorry, are you keeping up with the industry at all? Samsung isn’t matching shit. They’re a node behind Intel and 2.5 behind TSMC. What development are they matching?
And yes, a multitude of Chinese manufacturers do need Taiwan. China in general does. Will that be true in the far future? Who knows. But it’s certainly true now and in the short term.
well for one, it would take probably 10 or 20 years to get to that point in chinas domestic manufacturing. As well as geopolitical situation.
They would have very little reason to invade taiwan at that point. So they probably wouldn’t.
And to foil your plan a little bit, the US has spent billions of dollars in recent years constructing new TSMC and i believe intel fabs in america, there’s a big one in arizona. And idk where the other one is off the top of my head. But we’re already chinas biggest competition in that regard.
Not about actually needing a reason to invade, it’s about the implication
i guess but even then it would still have massive political implications, including the US, which is incredibly messy. And taiwan itself wouldn’t be very happy about it.
Extrinsic factors are the most important ones for this kind of stuff, it’s why the vietnam war failed for us.