12 Comments
Jul 2Liked by Claus Aasholm

For US national security and companies like Nvidia the prospects of something like this are worth considering. Because in reality Taiwan is so important in the semiconductor industry not just with TSMC, but all these dozens of auxiliary companies that supports the entire supply chain. The world I think underestimates the importance of this part of the world, in ways that for some reason haven't been made obvious to most consumers.

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The focus is on the shiny objects—the big boxes being built in the US. These state-of-the-art fabs will not work without a state-of-the-art supply chain and a skilled and dedicated workforce, which gets limited priority. Chip manufacturing moved from the US to SE Asia because of cost through quality. I don't think that has changed over time. SE Asia is still the best place to make chips, and Taiwan is the pinnacle of the industry.

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Jul 3Liked by Claus Aasholm

How much will American big Tech be directly responsible for nvidia's AI chip revenue of 2024 do you think? Like if you take their 10 biggest customers who meet the criteria of being American big Tech?

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The top 7 Big Tech (Assuming Tesla is a tech) companies accounted for 14.5 billion in Q2, out of 22.6 billion in data centre revenue and 26 billion in total. I think this distribution will continue throughout 24. Nvidia allocates AI to startups, supercomputers and sovereign computing. This is a good long term strategy rather than letting big tech gobble up everything.

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Jul 2Liked by Claus Aasholm

I spot a legend color issue in your East China Sea "Semiconductor Manufacturing Capacity. diagram. Blue and orange legend TITLES should be swapped.

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Thanks for spotting this - should be corrected

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Jul 2Liked by Claus Aasholm

Excellent! Just hope think tank (CIA or else) are working solutions to this scenario. I am not only saying preparing war, but building huge backup solution. TSMC new fab in Arizona is not enough...

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The supply chain needs some love for sure.

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Jul 2Liked by Claus Aasholm

A novel and scary take on what’s going on. Claus definitely presents a valid scenario.

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With a dementia-addled Parkinsons patient in the White House, bad actors have the green light. Anything is possible.

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I suggest you read Ed Conway's book 'Material World' and specifically his chapter on semi-conductors. All polycrystal comes from 1 specific place in the USA. The supply chain goes thru a myriad of single source suppliers. To say that China can do any of this alone is extremely naïve.

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