US Orders Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. to Halt All AI Chip Shipments to China

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨sqgl@beehaw.org⁩ to ⁨technology@beehaw.org⁩

https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-ordered-tsmc-halt-shipments-china-chips-used-ai-applications-source-says-2024-11-10/

US ordered TSMC, not Taiwan the country. The vast majority of sales are made to US based firms so they likely have a lot of sway.

US is the major customer of TSMC, so they can order them, not to mention we protect them with defense pacts, so they might want to actually listen. Pretty sure they make some of our military grade chips as well.

Cutting edge chips are used in cutting edge military hardware. TSMC provides a lot of the chips used in advanced American weapons. Turns out a faster chip in a missile makes the missile better able to make sophisticated split second decisions.

[Cobbled from Reddit thread]

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JayTreeman@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
This is a pretty stupid thing to do. They’re guaranteeing chinese chip making.

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- Doom@ttrpg.network ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  China is already making chips though? What does this change??
  
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  - JayTreeman@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    Taiwan is the largest chip maker in the world. One of the reasons that China doesn’t invade is because they’re also dependent on Taiwan chips. Forcing china to double down on their local industry hinders Taiwan’s security. The US knows this. They’re escalating things in a very tense geopolitical area
    
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  - interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Do they have anything below 28nm? With finfet or better?
    
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themurphy@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
The US have always been fascists, even before Trump. And if you’re in doubt what fascist means, because the word is misused basically everywhere, then this is a great example.

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- Doom@ttrpg.network ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  This actually isn’t fascism at all this is neoliberalism.
  
  Fascism doesn’t just mean make people do stuff lol
  
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  - themurphy@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    I know there’s a lot of different definitions on fascism, but one of them originated from Italy is, that the state and corporations act together. In this case, the US tries to bully Taiwan corporations to do their bidding “or else”.
    
    I know some would say it dosent count because the Taiwan firm can do as it pleases, but it becomes fascism when the Taiwan government now need to force the corporation to do as the US says.
    
    Indirect fascism. But then again there’s also parts of the US that’s not fascism, and then we can keep on going.
    
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  - Sauerkraut@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Starting wars with allied nations (China) just because they have a semi-socialist economy seems fairly fascist to me.
    
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barsoap@lemm.ee ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

The vast majority of sales are made to US based firms so they likely have a lot of sway.

The sway is TSMC uses ASML EUV lithography machines and the US holds patents on those because they did foundational research regarding EUV lithography. Also, the EU hasn’t put China on the “it is illegal for EU companies to kowtow to US sanctions” list. Ironically ASML could sell to Cuba and Iran. If the EU were to tell ASML to sell to China the US would be free to not buy ASML machines any more and, doing that, kill off Intel’s fabs.

None of this stuff has military relevance, you don’t need or even want to use small nodes (which require EUV) in military applications you want hardened chips instead. Run off the mill consumer chips go all frizzy if an EMP looks at them sideways. This is about the US protecting US fabs, foremost Intel. Not the chip design part but the manufacturing one.

Europe hasn’t played the high-end end-consumer chip market for ages and I doubt we’ll do it any time soon. Having ASML, Zeiss etc. means that whoever actually produces that stuff wants to be friendly with us and strategically, both military and economy, our own production facilities are perfectly sufficient. Hence also why ESMC will only go as small as 12nm, it’s the most cost-effective node size and performance is perfectly adequate for a missile, a CNC mill, or a car infotainment system. Or the gyroscope chip in your phone (it’s almost certainly a Bosch), EUV doesn’t make a lick of sense when you’re doing MEMS. Where we have to catch up is chip design lets see how that RISC-V supercomputer chip turns out.

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Boomkop3@reddthat.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Did you just post a misleading title and put a correction right underneath?

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- sqgl@beehaw.org ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Kind of.
  
  r/worldnews only allows unedited titles. Looks like it has changed since then. I have noticed Reuters to be misleading in the past in their headlines.
  
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  - Boomkop3@reddthat.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Ahh, that makes more sense! It looked like an odd thing to do
    
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