I'm surprised the US just doesn't fund a new fab company or consortium, like Japan did with Rapidus.

But I guess "too much socialism"

epistasis 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

I don't think the current Republican leadership has any opposition at all to handing over lots of government money to large business to do things!

The problem is that they are far too incompetent and have zero clue about tech, and only understand real estate, that simplest of business that can be executed with mere lizard-brain intelligence.

Tech is also about small startups disrupting large giants, which is completely antithetical to current Republican leadership ideals, where the wealthiest get all gains, regardless of who does the work.

It will take many years of full-on Democratic leadership to reconfigure the Republican Party back to a somewhat innovation-friendly business party. Meanwhile the Democrats, under Biden, were by far some of the most business-friendly politicians we have seen in perhaps a century, spurring massive investment in factories and industry, mostly across red states. But because it's a politically incorrect fact, it never gets reported.

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cjbgkagh 5 days ago | parent [-]

It irks me that the current administration points to the steel industry doing well as an example of bringing jobs back to the US. Like great you’ve made an uncompetitive industry more profitable at the expense of every downstream user of that material. Doing the very opposite of what should be done. We’re getting to the point, and have passed it in a few industries, where it’s more expensive to buy raw inputs in the US than refined outputs from China. That is a level of insanity that cannot last.

	▲	matwood 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		And to put some numbers on it, there are ~100k steel jobs in the US. So we have kneecapped a ton of other industries impacting millions all to maybe save 100k jobs.

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benreesman 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Seniconductor manufacturing was effectively centrally planned via SEMATEC and before that via de facto stewardship by things like the the Labs and later Intel as a vehicle for national policy.

This neat little dichotomy between "free market capitalism" and "centrally planned socialism" is a cute story but also complete fiction. In "capitalist" countries the government basically always runs R&D during any period of time when the stakes are high, and in "communist" countries there are always markets, and they are always sanctioned to some degree.

All of the foundational progress for American leadership in high technology was centrally planned and administered, all of it one way or another: through ATT, through NASA, through the DoD, through the universities. Value creation occurs under the watchful eye of the DoD.

Once in a while we go on an orgy of extractive wealth transfer like now, instead of creative innovation like usually, and the top industry guys always fuck it up. And on cue, yeah this is going great.

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sudofail 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

A lot of countries honestly should be taking this approach. Fabrication is just too important for national security. At least some domestic production is critical.