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.
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.
They would have very little reason to invade taiwan at that point. So they probably wouldn’t.
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.
Media: So… you know those high-tech chipmaking machines? The ones banned for sale to China. The ones needed to make the processors for phones, cars, TVs, and AI servers. What happens if China invades Taiwan? Doesn’t Taiwan have a lot of those machines?
Manufacturer: not a problem.
Media: Phew. Glad that’s settled… Say, how come?
Manufacturer: (slaps the roof of the $250M machine). We can lock this baby remotely. In fact, here’s the remote (pulls out a keyfob).
Media: OK, cool, cool.
Techies of the world: WHAT THE ACTUAL FU… !!!
“Disable” like we disabled Iranian uranium enrichment centrifuges?
Even if it’s disabled, like do you really think they’d just install their own OS? Or find away around the part that’s disabled? Like you can still jail break an iPhone
AFAIK the optics have to be regularly cleaned, calibrated and replaced. And by regularly, I mean daily/weekly for some of that.
The process is a carefully guarded trade secret and intentionally difficult. The companies that own the machines are not allowed to have employees who are trained in the process. When you buy those machines it comes with a service contract from the manufacturer. And the manufacturer is ASML - a Dutch company.
Again, if THATS the case, then you just find your own parameters and experiment with your pwn till its right. You don’t give up on the last car on earth if you’re a mechanic and they took the battery out. You find another that’s compatible or research how you could make your own.
Saying that a “company” with “trade secrets” is just a dumb patent road block to scare off consumers
You underestimate how extremely complex semiconductor photolithography is. It is the most complex manufacturing process ever conceived by humans to produce the most complex systems ever built by humans.
i would assume it’s intended to be irreversible, like contamination to the point of permanent dysfunction. Though im not sure how that would be possible, i assume it is.
Neo-scorched earth policy.
This is a good thing, but it’s hardly unique. Any advanced manufacturing facility will have remote access to their equipment in case an operator needs reconfigure it, transfer data, or in this case if they’re invaded by Lesser Taiwan.
This sounds more like a deadman switch.
I hope its a little better than remote access to disable. Internet access can be knocked out and cell signals jammed. Hopefully they’ve gorba deadman switch and disable things immediately in the event of an invasion.
China should just replicate Taiwan somewhere like they replicate Paris, Venice, etc. and call it a day.
China already had 53% global market share in semiconductors back in 2020
West Taiwan friend. Lesser sounds odd when it’s more populated and geographically larger. Though inferior sounds fitting
Message to China: don’t, because you would not find nothing here anyway.
Message to everybody else: y’all better help China with their decision, or else!!
The article is available only for registered user; does someone has the source please?
deleted by creator
