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Comment by wiz21c | Hacker News Reader

and TSMC is not exactly a european company...

Of course they weren't gonna export their crown jewels outside of Taiwan, the same way how the west didn't export their crown jewels to Asia when they did the technology transfers for semiconductor manufacturing in the '70s, making sure to keep their Asian partners at least a node behind.

Well well, how the turn-tables.

Everything gets out in the end. My Italian hometown had a "golden age" of silk manufacturing for a while, thanks to bugs smuggled out of China. It lasted for a couple of decades and then they were again smuggled out to other Italian towns. And then of course you have the nuclear shenanigans.

If European countries wanted the tech bad enough, they would find ways to get it. The problem is not the know-how but the massive investments needed to productize it.

>The problem is not the know-how but the massive investments needed to productize it.

Are you telling me the EU, the richest block in the world, has less money to spend on fabs than TSMC, as if the EU is scrapping for change behind the couch cushions.

If only you knew how much money the EU wastes through various useless and vanity projects that accomplish nothing except getting certain well connected people rich, we could have built 3x TSMCs.

But unlike Taiwan, we're lacking in visionary well educated tech leaders, and drowning in clueless politicians and established gentrified industry players who lobby the funds go to their projects instead.

> Are you telling me the EU, the richest block in the world, has less money to spend on fabs than TSMC

I didn't say we don't have the money, but that it's a problem to commit the money. It's basically the norm that EU countries unanimously agree that "something should be done" on a certain issue, but then disagree on how much it should cost and where the money should come from. This gets more and more complicated the bigger the cost is (and this is an expensive idea) and the farther we are from the regular 7-year-budget process (it was last agreed in 2020, so jockeying for big items will probably resume in 2025-26).

I don't disagree on the overall lack of vision in European political classes (hardly a fault of the EU, it's common to basically all countries and all levels of government), but even a visionary leader would have to work hard to get agreement on such a big project.

> Are you telling me the EU, the richest block in the world, has less money to spend on fabs than TSMC

That could very well turn out to be the case in practice, not for lack of money, but inability to provide the promised subsidies according to Financial Times:

https://www.ft.com/content/898454ba-8fc2-4b00-a14f-5f9ee152d...

Having a company an industry dependent on generous subsidies from states is a race to the bottom. TSMC will just pit you against other countries on the basis of "which one of you is gonna give us more of your tax-payers' money and we'll build our fab there"

> the funds go to their projects instead.

To me it just seems like relying on government funding to drive innovation in sectors where private companies have incentives to compete is extremely foolish.

Em.... ASML, a Dutch company, produces the tech behind these nodes.

It's a question of supply chains - not tech.

> massive investments

EU is turning back towards Austerity 2.0: Electric Saveroo these days.

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