So I show up at the new facility with my brand new stem degree and get hired at a nice pay level because there are damn few of us showing up. After a few years I decide I don't want to live in Arizona any more and look for another job on the coast. I walk in to an prospective employer with both my stem degree and years of experience.
The employer asks where I worked. I tell him. He then asks what my position there was. I reply that I can't legally answer that question for security reasons. The he asks me what I worked on. I tell him that is classified as well. Then he asks if I can at least tell him why I left and I reply .......that is even more illegal to say than your previous questions......
That sort of thing does happen. Only usually there are other outfits doing the same general thing in the same circumstances so they know how to deal with it. But this facility is a one off project. There are no competitors doing more or less the same thing in the same circumstances.
Something i wrote ages ago, when Trump was titular president:
I got something for the mailbag, something very interesting (you may need to be able to be a subscriber to read this), but Epsilon Theory is a respected financial newsletter.
This doesn't remind me of Russia in 1903, so much as it reminds me of the Soviet Union in 1990. That was a time when everyone in the USSR knew that the current system was still dangerous but collapsing. Still, by that point nobody paid more than lip service to the ideas underlying the system. Meanwhile, grift and fraud were abounding, and those in the know were hard at work, stealing everything that not nailed down while there were still things out there that could be stolen.
For a while there in the dying days of the Soviet Union, entrepreneurial minded grifters were stealing abandoned Aeroflot airliners and setting up their own airlines. Sounds legit.
In the link I provided, a few days ago, Kodak – which is a public company with less than $100 million in market cap, basically a glorified pension fund – is set to receive $765 million in non-recourse, unsecured “loans” from the International Development Finance Corporation (owned by the US government) to create a “pharmaceutical start-up” that over a period of eight years will start making "pharmaceutical supplies”. Whatever that means.
Of course, Kodak has zero expertise or experience in pharmaceutical supply production. The DFC was established by the Trump administration in 2019 to replace the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. As the link details, the Kodak executive team have strong ties to the Trump Administration. Naturally, the stock price of Kodak soared. Needless to say, the Kodak executive team are largely paid in stock and options, and they recently got big grants in the previous sixty days. That also means that they got paid up front, as much as $400,000,000 between them. Not bad for work that they personally will never have to deliver on.
This story calls to mind a comic drawing by the Polish artist Andziej Mleczko, which depicts a man writing "We're governed by idiots!" on a wall and a cop asking another "Should we arrest him for insulting the authorities or for revealing a state secret?".
Imagine if we go to high schools all over the country and offer top of the class students free tuition to become engineers specific to Chip and trch manufacturing. In 4 years you could get close to that American workforce. Possibly even do a recruitment where they start in senior year of high school- often a wasted year. There are solutions of course
On-shore semiconductor manufacturing is definitely important for national security. BUT, one also must have wafer production domestically (yes) lithography R&D and machines (some, but ASML of Holland is the best and do you want to have security agents protecting them ?) and chemicals (mostly domestic, but some are exclusively from Japan) Then you need to have secure grid, fault tolerant power production, anti-earth quake provisions (no fracking in the neighborhood, heavy bombers touching down may be equally bad, etc.) IMHO, the whole concept of secure enclave are difficult to implement and very easy to breach. And do you want to defend against EMP weapons ?
Hardware spying devices built into silicon and motherboards is logically possible. But if you can keep all security sensitive institutions OFF the internet and check against radio message emanated from inside the secure perimeter, these things cannot call back to the mother ship. As for bad chip design ? It will always happen: chip-design is effectively a software business. But the design process traditionally puts heavy attention toward verification (checking the chip does behave as expected) A human mole inside the ASIC design team is much more threatening.
IMHO, a general principle to use commercial off the shelf parts is valid for the military. Once in a while, special ASICs may be needed. The more general purpose the silicon is, the more sources you can acquire them. Were it in Russia, I guess they will just have a state company to cover design to fab all the way. Policies like CHIPS act is really a joke.
Although it is a challenge to completely bulletproof the entire production stream, we should probably keep in mind the old wag who said "it rains on the enemy, too." In other words, our adversaries are also susceptible to the same kinds of issues we might experience ourselves.
Very true. I would claim China faces far more hurdle. Let's say hypothetically CCP China control Taiwan overnight and captured all TSMC staff and all their downstream eco system economy and crew. Except for the chips already made and not yet shipped out, plus what can be made using existing materials, the entire semicon industry in Taiwan would be useless without all sorts of import from overseas. By the way, for military purpose, the finest geometry in chip making is usually a bad choice. Say, a chip used in tanks, in mach 10 gliding vehicle, controlling a mach 2.2 engine vector throttle, you actually need wider micro circuitry for hardware reliability. AFAIK, China and Russia have gotten those. A big black hole I don't know for sure is CAD software needed to design large chip. Such software is just like weapon system: they need repeated testing and improvement.
Interesting, but I don’t see the logic here. Russia manages to produce quality weapons that are not produced for profit. The U.S. used to produce likewise in the space program. In fact, if the U.S. is really motivated by security interests, one might think it more likely that quality, not profit, would be a priority. It has been said that some of our MIC weapons are not great, and look at Boeing. For profit production does not assure quality.
The bigger story is how export controls killed intels revenue in their largest market, aka China… go look up their China revenue in 2021 vs 2023, massive decline
Some was Chinese govt bans but a lot was the export controls catalyzed the Chinese semiconductor ecosystem, more investment, Chinese firms were forced to work with Chinese semi suppliers
Mr. Bryen, Baltic countries are spending billions of euros which they don't have on US weapons systems which have been shown to be relatively easily counteracted on the Ukrainian battlefield. How should they spend their defense dollars? Thank you.
Is it likely that most weapons systems the US is offering for sale have similar vulnerabilities? With that in mind, what is a better strategy for small countries bordering Russia to adopt, or a better weapons system to purchase to deter an attack from Russia? Or is a better strategy to re-establish diplomatic relations with Russia?
How would that help them keep their countries? Have you considered they decided being a team player for NATO is the best strategy available to balance their relations with Russia?
This question assumes facts not in evidence, such as the idea that Russia seeks dominance or that europe seeks any form of balance.
Hell, when a political class european is forced to admit that the US committed an act of war by blowing up Nordstream, the response is to mumble something to the effect that bad slaves deserve their beatings.
One thing I always say: when a company leaves, it isn't coming back.
Politicians don't create job nor steer an economy. In the EU there's talk about reindustrialization. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. You can throw billions around but companies look to invest long term. The combination of overregulation, labour cost, high energy prices, makes it unattractive and uncompetitive to invest here.
While China and Russia invest in STEM we have social studies and liberal art and things like that. One of our universities now has the cours Taylor Swift. Yes you read that correct. Talk about a waste of time and taxpayer money.
Two thoughts come to mind. The first is we are falling behind in graduating enough STEM students. Those that we do graduate often include half who are foreign students. The same applies to faculty. The second thought is the job marketplace itself. Importing STEM personnel from abroad means they are paid a lot less and there is far less social cost overhead. In short, cheap specialized and expendable labor. One result is that capable Americans are not hired. It is obvious that we should bring in STEM capable resources from abroad by making them citizens and assuring they are paid the same as everyone else. That would level the playing field and perhaps stimulate more US students to take up STEM-oriented studies.
Valuations for The entire semiconductor sector is down around 20% over the past six weeks or so. It's not hard to discern why: China represents 30 to 50% of revenues in semis and fabrication. US sanctions cut off a large revenue component of all these firms blowing a hole in balance sheets.
Overseas firms have pretty much had enough of this. There's an easy fix. Just a eliminate all US components and other IP from the bill of materials of their whole product line. Companies around the world will then be free to do business as they see fit without interference from the DC swamp. MAGA!
You can't make this stuff up. No, wait. Actually, you could only make this stuff up. The people who spy on us are telling us they can't keep the people who make the stuff they use to spy on us from spying on them. And now they want to build a private enterprise that is based on security so high that nobody can tell us what they are doing so they have to sell it to us without explaining what it does.
But why not wonder if everything we think we have is based on a similar conspiracy? Anyone can tour thousands of houses for sale. It's a popular pastime. Is there something weird going on there? Look at these homes. Look at all the homeless. What might that mean in the current context?
Congress is responsible for appropriation and that responsibility includes enforcement of the spending. How can Congress write bills that run into the hundreds or thousands of pages without including specificity?
Congress s supposed to exercise oversight, but typically that is long after funds are appropriated. The question of specificity is something else entirely. Usually appropriations do not include much detail --they are line items. The Executive Department (CHIPS Act is Commerce Department) writes the actual requirements and is supposed to fully audit the grants and loans. But CHIPS Act was handled by a group intent on passing out money, not exercising discernment or caution and not checking on whether the grants and loans would meet any expectation.
So I show up at the new facility with my brand new stem degree and get hired at a nice pay level because there are damn few of us showing up. After a few years I decide I don't want to live in Arizona any more and look for another job on the coast. I walk in to an prospective employer with both my stem degree and years of experience.
The employer asks where I worked. I tell him. He then asks what my position there was. I reply that I can't legally answer that question for security reasons. The he asks me what I worked on. I tell him that is classified as well. Then he asks if I can at least tell him why I left and I reply .......that is even more illegal to say than your previous questions......
That sort of thing does happen. Only usually there are other outfits doing the same general thing in the same circumstances so they know how to deal with it. But this facility is a one off project. There are no competitors doing more or less the same thing in the same circumstances.
The Biden administration is determined to destroy America. So this is no surprise. How much of that black ops money gets laundered do you suppose?
We know 10% goes to the big guy
The point is to buy supporters.
Something i wrote ages ago, when Trump was titular president:
I got something for the mailbag, something very interesting (you may need to be able to be a subscriber to read this), but Epsilon Theory is a respected financial newsletter.
https://www.epsilontheory.com/the-grifters-chapter-1-kodak/?utm_campaign=website&utm_source=ET%20Newsletter&utm_medium=Email
This doesn't remind me of Russia in 1903, so much as it reminds me of the Soviet Union in 1990. That was a time when everyone in the USSR knew that the current system was still dangerous but collapsing. Still, by that point nobody paid more than lip service to the ideas underlying the system. Meanwhile, grift and fraud were abounding, and those in the know were hard at work, stealing everything that not nailed down while there were still things out there that could be stolen.
For a while there in the dying days of the Soviet Union, entrepreneurial minded grifters were stealing abandoned Aeroflot airliners and setting up their own airlines. Sounds legit.
In the link I provided, a few days ago, Kodak – which is a public company with less than $100 million in market cap, basically a glorified pension fund – is set to receive $765 million in non-recourse, unsecured “loans” from the International Development Finance Corporation (owned by the US government) to create a “pharmaceutical start-up” that over a period of eight years will start making "pharmaceutical supplies”. Whatever that means.
Of course, Kodak has zero expertise or experience in pharmaceutical supply production. The DFC was established by the Trump administration in 2019 to replace the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. As the link details, the Kodak executive team have strong ties to the Trump Administration. Naturally, the stock price of Kodak soared. Needless to say, the Kodak executive team are largely paid in stock and options, and they recently got big grants in the previous sixty days. That also means that they got paid up front, as much as $400,000,000 between them. Not bad for work that they personally will never have to deliver on.
Then there's the trading volume in Kodak stock:
https://twitter.com/TESLAcharts/status/1288419226013794305/photo/1
Golly gee. Why that looks like insider trading.
This is pretty much the textbook case of crony capitalism. <i>What could possibly go wrong?</i>
No, I don't expect that a President Biden would be that much better, if at all.
Thank you for the excellent comment, makes a lot of sense to me.
This story calls to mind a comic drawing by the Polish artist Andziej Mleczko, which depicts a man writing "We're governed by idiots!" on a wall and a cop asking another "Should we arrest him for insulting the authorities or for revealing a state secret?".
We are ruled, not by well-meaning bumblers, but by full-on sociopaths.
Imagine if we go to high schools all over the country and offer top of the class students free tuition to become engineers specific to Chip and trch manufacturing. In 4 years you could get close to that American workforce. Possibly even do a recruitment where they start in senior year of high school- often a wasted year. There are solutions of course
it would be a far better investment than the Chips Act
That would imply our politicians care about Americans. They won’t lift a finger for anything that doesn’t result in a kickback.
On-shore semiconductor manufacturing is definitely important for national security. BUT, one also must have wafer production domestically (yes) lithography R&D and machines (some, but ASML of Holland is the best and do you want to have security agents protecting them ?) and chemicals (mostly domestic, but some are exclusively from Japan) Then you need to have secure grid, fault tolerant power production, anti-earth quake provisions (no fracking in the neighborhood, heavy bombers touching down may be equally bad, etc.) IMHO, the whole concept of secure enclave are difficult to implement and very easy to breach. And do you want to defend against EMP weapons ?
Hardware spying devices built into silicon and motherboards is logically possible. But if you can keep all security sensitive institutions OFF the internet and check against radio message emanated from inside the secure perimeter, these things cannot call back to the mother ship. As for bad chip design ? It will always happen: chip-design is effectively a software business. But the design process traditionally puts heavy attention toward verification (checking the chip does behave as expected) A human mole inside the ASIC design team is much more threatening.
IMHO, a general principle to use commercial off the shelf parts is valid for the military. Once in a while, special ASICs may be needed. The more general purpose the silicon is, the more sources you can acquire them. Were it in Russia, I guess they will just have a state company to cover design to fab all the way. Policies like CHIPS act is really a joke.
Although it is a challenge to completely bulletproof the entire production stream, we should probably keep in mind the old wag who said "it rains on the enemy, too." In other words, our adversaries are also susceptible to the same kinds of issues we might experience ourselves.
Very true. I would claim China faces far more hurdle. Let's say hypothetically CCP China control Taiwan overnight and captured all TSMC staff and all their downstream eco system economy and crew. Except for the chips already made and not yet shipped out, plus what can be made using existing materials, the entire semicon industry in Taiwan would be useless without all sorts of import from overseas. By the way, for military purpose, the finest geometry in chip making is usually a bad choice. Say, a chip used in tanks, in mach 10 gliding vehicle, controlling a mach 2.2 engine vector throttle, you actually need wider micro circuitry for hardware reliability. AFAIK, China and Russia have gotten those. A big black hole I don't know for sure is CAD software needed to design large chip. Such software is just like weapon system: they need repeated testing and improvement.
Chip industry needs a Lot of Water. Intel will probably locate this facility in Arizona, what could go wrong ?
Interesting, but I don’t see the logic here. Russia manages to produce quality weapons that are not produced for profit. The U.S. used to produce likewise in the space program. In fact, if the U.S. is really motivated by security interests, one might think it more likely that quality, not profit, would be a priority. It has been said that some of our MIC weapons are not great, and look at Boeing. For profit production does not assure quality.
The bigger story is how export controls killed intels revenue in their largest market, aka China… go look up their China revenue in 2021 vs 2023, massive decline
I am not sure that is really what happened.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/263560/net-revenue-of-intel-by-region-since-2006/
24B in revenue in 2021…15B in 2023 while the market grew in China…
Some was Chinese govt bans but a lot was the export controls catalyzed the Chinese semiconductor ecosystem, more investment, Chinese firms were forced to work with Chinese semi suppliers
Mr. Bryen, Baltic countries are spending billions of euros which they don't have on US weapons systems which have been shown to be relatively easily counteracted on the Ukrainian battlefield. How should they spend their defense dollars? Thank you.
The Russians have found vulnerabilities in some US weapons which they are exploiting. Other alternatives from Europe are even worse.
Is it likely that most weapons systems the US is offering for sale have similar vulnerabilities? With that in mind, what is a better strategy for small countries bordering Russia to adopt, or a better weapons system to purchase to deter an attack from Russia? Or is a better strategy to re-establish diplomatic relations with Russia?
Defense is not the point. The point is to show who is the loyalest little slave.
How would that help them keep their countries? Have you considered they decided being a team player for NATO is the best strategy available to balance their relations with Russia?
This question assumes facts not in evidence, such as the idea that Russia seeks dominance or that europe seeks any form of balance.
Hell, when a political class european is forced to admit that the US committed an act of war by blowing up Nordstream, the response is to mumble something to the effect that bad slaves deserve their beatings.
Expecting loyalty from a slave is the height of idiocy.
Really? Humans are herd animals to rival any lemming or sheep.
Herd animals have no need for morals or ethics.
So?
We will take that as your admission to having the same absence of morality and ethical judgement as a herd animal.
As with disinformation, election interference, and the like... if the CIA claims it can be done, it's because they are doing it.
One thing I always say: when a company leaves, it isn't coming back.
Politicians don't create job nor steer an economy. In the EU there's talk about reindustrialization. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. You can throw billions around but companies look to invest long term. The combination of overregulation, labour cost, high energy prices, makes it unattractive and uncompetitive to invest here.
While China and Russia invest in STEM we have social studies and liberal art and things like that. One of our universities now has the cours Taylor Swift. Yes you read that correct. Talk about a waste of time and taxpayer money.
Two thoughts come to mind. The first is we are falling behind in graduating enough STEM students. Those that we do graduate often include half who are foreign students. The same applies to faculty. The second thought is the job marketplace itself. Importing STEM personnel from abroad means they are paid a lot less and there is far less social cost overhead. In short, cheap specialized and expendable labor. One result is that capable Americans are not hired. It is obvious that we should bring in STEM capable resources from abroad by making them citizens and assuring they are paid the same as everyone else. That would level the playing field and perhaps stimulate more US students to take up STEM-oriented studies.
Valuations for The entire semiconductor sector is down around 20% over the past six weeks or so. It's not hard to discern why: China represents 30 to 50% of revenues in semis and fabrication. US sanctions cut off a large revenue component of all these firms blowing a hole in balance sheets.
Overseas firms have pretty much had enough of this. There's an easy fix. Just a eliminate all US components and other IP from the bill of materials of their whole product line. Companies around the world will then be free to do business as they see fit without interference from the DC swamp. MAGA!
You can't make this stuff up. No, wait. Actually, you could only make this stuff up. The people who spy on us are telling us they can't keep the people who make the stuff they use to spy on us from spying on them. And now they want to build a private enterprise that is based on security so high that nobody can tell us what they are doing so they have to sell it to us without explaining what it does.
But why not wonder if everything we think we have is based on a similar conspiracy? Anyone can tour thousands of houses for sale. It's a popular pastime. Is there something weird going on there? Look at these homes. Look at all the homeless. What might that mean in the current context?
When the Congress appropriates money and fails to designate it properly, misspending cannot be blamed on administrative law errors.
In most cases it is up to the responsible executive departments to manage funds as Congress has no such capability
Congress is responsible for appropriation and that responsibility includes enforcement of the spending. How can Congress write bills that run into the hundreds or thousands of pages without including specificity?
Congress s supposed to exercise oversight, but typically that is long after funds are appropriated. The question of specificity is something else entirely. Usually appropriations do not include much detail --they are line items. The Executive Department (CHIPS Act is Commerce Department) writes the actual requirements and is supposed to fully audit the grants and loans. But CHIPS Act was handled by a group intent on passing out money, not exercising discernment or caution and not checking on whether the grants and loans would meet any expectation.
Line items are not pages long.