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Remote seems very dangerous, too easy to have a hacker take down your factory.

I don't know the fab equipment, but my limited understanding is the sheer equipment costs and experience are what limit it to a few places. Would a basic tear down with destruction of sensitive parts be enough to render it obsolete or at least delay greatly any production?

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TSMC's chip fab is so complex that to do 7nm chip lithography they had to invent new mirrors for the light they etch the silicon with. It'd probably only take 15 minutes and a hammer to do serious long term damage inside a chip fab plant it's such precise form of manufacturing.

My thought as well. The tolerances are so small that any scratch or dent on a part involved with the lithography means an entirely new part is the only option. Most of the equipment would likely be unusable and unrepairable with a couple well placed kicks.

There's unusable for production (easy; just deleting software or configs would do that for a while!). There's "unusable for extracting information to re-create the tech" which is a bit harder.

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