Japan's gamble to turn island of Hokkaido into global chip hub

Engineering pay in the EU is bad. If that can be rectified then top talent would not move to the US. Also, US companies actively harness senior individual contributors. I don't think traditional EU companies have that.

I think all the talk around regulations, taxes, etc. are a side show. Yes, there could be slightly looser labor laws. But when it comes down to it - money matters and Europe just doesn't pay. The same for Canada. Their universities plodded through AI all through the "AI Winter" and now all their best AI talent works for US companies. There is no single Canadian AI company that's at the level of what their US counterparts are doing.

It's certainly something to be concerned about. Even the building where MOS Technology made the 6502 (in Norristown PA) is still a contaminated EPA superfund site. It's an industry with very nasty chemicals and a long history of leaking them.

Actively disrespecting other countries who worked hard on developing such capabilities and assuming European nations should be on the "big boys table" is what is so jarring.

Nothing stopped European nations like Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, France, Italy, etc from continuing to invest in domestic capacity 20 years ago, but most of their IP is now developed in American, Indian, or other Asian subsidiaries or JVs.

Just becuase Europe was historically the richest and most powerful continent doesn't mean it will be forever.

China has been dumping massive amounts of resources in this for at least 20 years, this (Making chips domestically with local tech) has been a long term goal for a very long time. The chip ban is relatively recent. IF it had an effect it was merely expediting a process that was going to happen regardless. China was NEVER going to be content importing Western chips or western machines to make chips indefinitely.

> China is already catching up.

Sure of course, just like COMAC vs Airbus/Boeing, BYD vs Western EVs etc.

But this is a bit different IMHO.

First there's still a lot of catching-up to do.

And second are they going to be able to gain sufficient marketshare in the Western market ? I am thinking here, both in terms of displacing ASML and in terms of Western companies being willing to depend on Chinese tech for such critical activities.

Xiami have designed a 3nm chip, however I am not convinced SMIC have a process for them to build the chip at any scale yet. Let's see - eventually China will obviously have a process comparable to TSMC but I think currently they are at least 18 months behind. They were 5 years behind before the sanctions so they are catching up fast.

They would be catching up anyway. At least now there will be a second source for the tech. ASML does fantastic work but they may not have all the answers.

It's the lack of 996 grindset holding Europe back.

Laptop sticker "This machine feeds bureaucrats". /s

With very bad results. I was walking a fab in China a few years ago: all machines are German, Japanese and Dutch. I asked why they don't have Chinese ones: the cto said they exist for the German and Japanese machines but they break much faster so it is not worth it and the asml machines are not there at all in any type of competitive form. It will happen, just not yet I guess.

A better example is the EUV lithography light sources used by ASML. They are manufactured in the US by a US company ASML acquired with technology licensed from US government labs. That critical part of the business is American in all but name.

It is possible that the EU could develop their own state-of-the-art lithography light sources but for now ASML is dependent on the US for it.

Silicon for solar cell production is currently being mined and refined in Sweden. What would it take to adapt that production line for semiconductor-grade silicon, I wonder.

ST Microelectronics makes 18 nm chips and 6 out of their 7 fabs are in Europe: https://www.st.com/content/st_com/en/about/manufacturing-at-...

> Meanwhile the EU

What do you think the EU is? It's not a country, not a federative union. These things need a lot of discussions and synchronization among member countries, it does not work otherwise, so it takes time. I also hold the opinion that time is a resource the EU does not have, so it badly needs to reform itself - its framework no longer works for this "new age".

The EU can't really do anything. The EU is a loose confederation of countries that delegate responsibilities to this united body.

Japan is a single country with a single government that can unilaterally decide what it wants to do.

That is incompeten5 leadership no? If your talent wants to move...

Seems silly to be talking about this as if this is some kind of global consortium effort.

Japan is building Japan at semi conductor industry, for the benefit of itself, of course it is located in Japan.

Seems even more active, at least according to number of magnitude 6+ earthquakes since 1900 in the region https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/?extent=12.72608...

It's been in vogue since the American invasion of Vietnam

Spot on. And the mistake of considering appeasement of said totalitarian superpower by “letting them have it” would be just as enormous.

I don't think China wants to destroy Taiwan. They want it to be a part of China.

As a Czech who absolutely hates the Protectorate era, I can still see a good case to use somewhat neutral expressions like "politically unstable" if you want to discuss technical topics like supply chains without delving into the underlying politics.

Declaring "I am a friend of democracies threatened by totalitarian countries" before every economic utterance looks as performative and ultimately counterproductive to me as all the "land acknowledgments" that infected the US academia. (Not coincidentally, those don't help actual Amerindians at all.)

Yeah, Central Europe in the 1930s was politically unstable, no way around it. And it wasn't just question of Czechoslovakia vs. Germany either. Most countries had irredentist movements and/or land demands on their neighbours.

China doesn’t want to destroy Taiwan , it wants to reunite with it like it did with other territories that had been taken by foreign powers, like happened to Hong Kong and Macau. Taiwan was occupied by Japan and then never went back to being China after the Japanese were defeated because the Chinese Party that was defeated in the Revolution fled to the Island and never accepted the PRC as legit government in China. Some of the more nationalist Taiwanese even consider themselves to be the legit government in exile of all China. You seem to not understand any of that when you compare China with Nazi Germany, really embarrassing.

Wait till you find out Taiwan has the same claims.

This is to counter the claim of the Japanese PM that Japan might join in the war if China goes for Taiwan.

About a decade ago, some Chinese propagandists were encouraging calling Okinawa the Ryukyu kingdom and trying to ferment an independence campaign. It didn’t get too far.

A LOT of countries on the planet talk about annexing their former territories, like Orbans Hungary. Others have actually done it (Armenia- Azerbaijan).

What do you want to do about it? Start a world war with them just in case to provent them from doing it (further)? Bombing them in the name of peace?

China maintain the view that Tibet is part of China since the establishment of PRC, and they make this very explicit. Same for their border disputes with India. China never admitted that they believe it's not theirs. Mea while China does not ever say that Japan or Korea is part of China (and it's the only reason why they keep North Korea from collapsing despite it being super annoying).

So, again, any example of China suddenly started to claim lands?

> And then there's Tibet.

I suspect they only care about Tibet in as much as it’s crucial for freshwater supply across significant parts of Asia, which is precisely why there are border clashes with Indian forces.

Speaking as an Indian. Most of these are just diplomatic flexing of muscles which mostly reduce to literally nothing.

There is not going to a be a war in the modern context.

Secondly, only one war has happened between China and India, in which arguably we Indians kind of started it- Read here- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_policy_(Sino-Indian_co...

""" The forward policy had Nehru identify a set of strategies designed with the ultimate goal of effectively forcing the Chinese from territory that the Indian government claimed. The doctrine was based on a theory that China would not likely launch an all-out war if India began to occupy territory that China considered to be its own. India's thinking was partly based on the fact that China had many external problems in early 1962, especially with one of the Taiwan Strait Crises. Also, Chinese leaders had insisted they did not wish a war.[18]

"""

Also Korean War, 1959 Tibetan Uprising, Nathu La and Cho La clashes, Sino-Soviet Border Conflict, Paracel Islands conflict, Sino-Vietnam border clashes, Johnson South Reef Skirmish, China–India border clashes (Galwan), South China Sea standoffs.

> It's pattern recognition over 3,000 years.

Now do the same for the USA, UK, Japan, Italy, Turkey, etc.

Japan's also like, long as the distance between Warsaw to Barcelona. Or to Gibraltar if you include islands south to Okinawa. And Hokkaido is an "island" that's about as big as the entire Czech Republic. Is investment in a French chip factory considered risky because it's practically right in front of Russia... not really no?

The Chinese threat is also being handled by rapid rearmament. JSDF has been like, dual-fast-tracking lots of things including MRBMs for operational capabilities in 2026-27 timeframes.

Nowadays, are large ships well protected from small unmanned underwater ships? Are they worth building?

"We already have trouble with one chip nexus is right next to China, and now we build another one? "ha ha". We is humanity."

Your "whole humanity 'We'" isn't who's investing in chip industry in Hokkaido. It's Japan.

> Meanwhile the US builds a ring of military bases in countries surrounding China and that's not supposed to be seen as bellicose in any way.

Shouldn't you take WWII history into the account?

1. South Korea - Korean war happened and majority of South Korean want US military base there 'cause you know North Korea with its nukes point at Seoul.

2. Japan - well, everyone know what happened and the treaty were signed thus military base in Japan.

That's because the US was founded on a unique constitution to empower individuals against tyranny, then defeated (with Russia, mind) the Nazis in world war II, bootstrapped the UN, went to the moon, and ushered in an era of global leadership and peace, along with unmatched soft power (films, news, etc). Camelot, shining city on the hill. China had a bloody communist revolution, then got rich (in part by breaking deals and ripping off IP) - also through hard work. America is porous, "Shortbus", "anyone can make it", American dream. China is ethnonationalist, and has a sense of ethnic and cultural supremacy that is not inclusive of "outsiders". That's why it's a problem, and, rightly, seen/intuitied to be a problem, more so than the US (despite US' many failings/misteps, etc).