There is no such thing as a “smallish” chip manufacturer that can manufacture leading edge chips. It’s about scale.

If it were that easy, Apple, Amazon, Google AMD, Nvidia, etc who all design their own chips would have done it.

Flip side: why would Apple, Amazon, Google, AMD, NVIDIA etc build their own when they can outsource it cheaper?

Companies are run to make a profit… they don’t care about sovereignty as long as the money is coming in.

Because it’s extremely lucrative and strategically valuable to the US

	▲	SJC_Hacker 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Because it’s extremely lucrative It could be extremely lucrative if they get it right. Simply trying to copy TSMC would also be a poor strategy. Companies have "core competencies" (or should). The manufacture (not design) of high-end silicon has never been one for any of these companies except Intel, and they have just lost big time. > strategically valuable to the US Yeah, they don't care.
	▲	alfiedotwtf 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		… but the shareholders are global?! That’s not really a compelling argument unless you made it a requirement that all major/strategic companies must have 100% domestic ownership! BUT - all you then need to do is create a Delaware LLC that buys the strategic stock, which is owned by $SCARY_FOREIGNERS

gizajob 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I agree but by the same logic intel could have done it and didn’t manage to so far.

	▲	mensetmanusman 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Intel couldn’t because the science is too hard to do with the scale of only your own designs. Intel had to stop competing with their own designs and open up their fabs like tsmc.