[Puffer Fish]

DEI killed the CHIPS Act

(DEI = "Diverity, Equity, Inclusion")

The Biden administration recently promised it will finally loosen the purse strings on $39 billion of CHIPS Act grants to encourage semiconductor fabrication in the U.S. But less than a week later, Intel announced that it’s putting the brakes on its Columbus factory. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has pushed back production at its second Arizona foundry. The remaining major chipmaker, Samsung, just delayed its first Texas fab.
This is not the way companies typically respond to multi-billion-dollar subsidies. So what explains chipmakers’ apparent ingratitude? In large part, frustration with DEI ("Diversity, Equity, Inclusion") requirements embedded in the CHIPS Act.

Commentators have noted that CHIPS and Science Act money has been sluggish. What they haven't noticed is that it’s because the CHIPS Act is so loaded with DEI pork that it can't move.
The department does not call speed critical, even though the impetus for the CHIPS Act is that 90 percent of the world’s advanced microchips are made in Taiwan, which China is preparing to annex by 2027, maybe even 2025.

Handouts abound. There's plenty for the left—requirements that chipmakers submit detailed plans to educate, employ, and train lots of women and people of color, as well as “justice-involved individuals,” more commonly known as ex-cons. There’s plenty for the right—veterans and members of rural communities find their way into the typical DEI definition of minorities. There's even plenty for the planet: Arizona Democrats just bragged they’ve won $15 million in CHIPS funding for an ASU project fighting climate change.

DEI killed the CHIPS Act, by Matt Cole & Chris Nicholson, The Hill, March 7, 2024
https://thehill.com/opinion/4517470-dei ... chips-act/

So here we go. At some point China will take over the 3 nanometer chip industry while America stuffed our own effort so full of DEI pork, it cannot move. Intel is building out of the country in Israel and Poland, taking its chances with Russian and Hamas attacks rather than American DEI.
The CHIPS Act currently is a jobs program for favored minorities that excludes white and Asian men already trained in the field. Sadly, most DEI candidates lack "the right stuff" to do the job, but that doesn't matter.
Most importantly:
"This is the stuff declining empires are made of. As America pursues national security by building a diverse workforce, China does it by building warships."

America is falling behind China due to political stupidity, appeasements to special interests, and political correctness. This threatens the American supply chain, and America's national interests in case of a future conflict with China.

As typical, all the BS from the Left is hurting and threatening America's national security and economic position.

In the event of a future big conflict with China, this could easily throw a roadblock into America's economy, with huge supply chain interruption, setting America back by a decade.

And it seems every time Democrats want to pass a huge spending bill, the reality is that it's filled with funding for all sorts of pet projects and things that align with the progressive ideological agenda.
How much of this massive spending in taxpayer money is actually trickling down to real investments in technology and infrastructure?

[late]

You really need to start paying attention.

China does low end chips, the really cheap ones. Even if China got the TSSC factory undamaged, the highly skilled people needed to run it will have left the country. Those skills would be welcomed in any country that produces chips.

But wait, it gets worse... Making a powerful chip requires many steps, and we have China roadblocked on all the important ones.

So that part of the editorial is unrefined extract of male bovine quadraped... (that means BS)

The main problem is funding.

It needs a lot more money. The House Republicans want to cut funding, not expand it, and Biden has more important fights to do against the crazies in the House.

Lastly, there is some truth in there, but what the guys in Taiwan are having trouble with is dealing with American culture. Things like enviromental regulations, for example.

Like I keep telling you... YOU NEED TO PAY ATTENTION.

[Puffer Fish]

But wait, it gets worse... Making a powerful chip requires many steps, and we have China roadblocked on all the important ones.

That may have been true 15 years ago, but China has been rapidly catching up. Today China is only about 10 years behind the technology of the United States and Western Europe, when it comes to semiconductor computer processor chips.

At this point, the United States is only throwing roadblocks making it more difficult for China to steal the latest technologies.

[Puffer Fish]

The main problem is funding.

It needs a lot more money. The House Republicans want to cut funding, not expand it,

Why give it more money when Democrats have diverted away so much of the money from where it was "supposed to" go?

[Rancid]

Samsung, just delayed its first Texas fab.

Samsung announced this fab way before CHIPS was ever a concept.

BTW, this is a second Fab. Samsung already has one here.

Also, SAmsung isn't an American company.

[late]

That may have been true 15 years ago, but China has been rapidly catching up. Today China is only about 10 years behind the technology of the United States and Western Europe, when it comes to semiconductor computer processor chips.

At this point, the United States is only throwing roadblocks making it more difficult for China to steal the latest technologies.

Stop believing Chinese press releases, wake me when you hold a 5nm Chinese made chip in your hot little hands.

[late]

Why give it more money when Democrats have diverted away so much of the money from where it was "supposed to" go?

You know I am going to call you out when you make up dumbass BS.

That's dumbass BS.

[AFAIK]

You really need to start paying attention.

He doesn't even read the articles he copy and pastes here let alone develops an awareness of a world beyond that.

The opinion piece clearly states that both Republicans and Democrats have included members of their respective bases they wish to benefit from this investment but Puffer Fish thinks it's only Democrats and "the left" who expect to have anything to show their supporters in exchange for transferring $40bn from public to private hands.

I also like the use of the term 'trickle down' to refer to multi-billion dollar TNCs receiving billions of dollars of state handouts. It's the sort of statement I'd expect the satirist Colbert to make.

[Puffer Fish]

He doesn't even read the articles he copy and pastes here let alone develops an awareness of a world beyond that.

The opinion piece clearly states that both Republicans and Democrats have included members of their respective bases they wish to benefit from this investment but Puffer Fish thinks it's only Democrats and "the left" who expect to have anything to show their supporters in exchange for transferring $40bn from public to private hands.

That does not mean I am incorrect though.

The opinion I express was my own. As such, it's not really possible for me to "misrepresent" an Opinion article.

If I choose to link to an Opinion article and only express part of the opinion in that article, or add my own opinion that has nothing to do with the opinion in the article, that is perfectly okay.
Some people seem to have trouble differentiating between opinion versus plain simple facts.
Plain simple facts are either true or they are not. (Example: Did person A kill person B ? ) Opinion is an interpretation and perspective to try to understand the meaning of complicated things. (Example: Should the killing be considered to be murder?)

[late]

That does not mean I am incorrect though.

Most of the time you are painfully wrong.

[JohnRawls]

DEI killed the CHIPS Act

(DEI = "Diverity, Equity, Inclusion")

The Biden administration recently promised it will finally loosen the purse strings on $39 billion of CHIPS Act grants to encourage semiconductor fabrication in the U.S. But less than a week later, Intel announced that it’s putting the brakes on its Columbus factory. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has pushed back production at its second Arizona foundry. The remaining major chipmaker, Samsung, just delayed its first Texas fab.
This is not the way companies typically respond to multi-billion-dollar subsidies. So what explains chipmakers’ apparent ingratitude? In large part, frustration with DEI ("Diversity, Equity, Inclusion") requirements embedded in the CHIPS Act.

Commentators have noted that CHIPS and Science Act money has been sluggish. What they haven't noticed is that it’s because the CHIPS Act is so loaded with DEI pork that it can't move.
The department does not call speed critical, even though the impetus for the CHIPS Act is that 90 percent of the world’s advanced microchips are made in Taiwan, which China is preparing to annex by 2027, maybe even 2025.

Handouts abound. There's plenty for the left—requirements that chipmakers submit detailed plans to educate, employ, and train lots of women and people of color, as well as “justice-involved individuals,” more commonly known as ex-cons. There’s plenty for the right—veterans and members of rural communities find their way into the typical DEI definition of minorities. There's even plenty for the planet: Arizona Democrats just bragged they’ve won $15 million in CHIPS funding for an ASU project fighting climate change.

DEI killed the CHIPS Act, by Matt Cole & Chris Nicholson, The Hill, March 7, 2024
https://thehill.com/opinion/4517470-dei ... chips-act/

So here we go. At some point China will take over the 3 nanometer chip industry while America stuffed our own effort so full of DEI pork, it cannot move. Intel is building out of the country in Israel and Poland, taking its chances with Russian and Hamas attacks rather than American DEI.
The CHIPS Act currently is a jobs program for favored minorities that excludes white and Asian men already trained in the field. Sadly, most DEI candidates lack "the right stuff" to do the job, but that doesn't matter.
Most importantly:
"This is the stuff declining empires are made of. As America pursues national security by building a diverse workforce, China does it by building warships."

America is falling behind China due to political stupidity, appeasements to special interests, and political correctness. This threatens the American supply chain, and America's national interests in case of a future conflict with China.

As typical, all the BS from the Left is hurting and threatening America's national security and economic position.

In the event of a future big conflict with China, this could easily throw a roadblock into America's economy, with huge supply chain interruption, setting America back by a decade.

And it seems every time Democrats want to pass a huge spending bill, the reality is that it's filled with funding for all sorts of pet projects and things that align with the progressive ideological agenda.
How much of this massive spending in taxpayer money is actually trickling down to real investments in technology and infrastructure?

Wow so much nonsense from a person who has no idea about microchips and IT sector in general be it services, products or hardware manufacturing.

First of all, Chips act 39 billion is basically nothing. And when I say nothing, I mean literally nothing. 39 billion is pennies for state of the art microchip manufacturers or the sector in general and the needed fields. That is a cost of basically 1 super modern FAb. But the cost to just construct it and put the equipment in it. This totally ignores the manpower cost, the IP and education that goes in to developing them etc etc etc

For Comparison China tried to invest around 500 billion Dollars in the last 5 years or so and they got nowhere basically. They can manufacture low end chips cost-effectively but thats about it. China has no mid range or high end chips that they manufacture on a cost-effective basis that can compete on price or performance. Even their newest thing that was popular that they put in Huawei phones seems to have been a subsidiesd by basically the government that paid for the cost of manufacturing.

What most people don't realise is that a product has to be cost-effective in production and competitive against other similar products to be mass manufactured, otherwise somebody has to eat the cost. The reason why Intal/Samsung/TSMC/Global Foundries/Texas Instruments etc are global leaders is because they are both competitive and cost-effective in manufacturing.

The reason why China can't compete is because they do not have access to dozens if not more services and hardware that is required for that high end and even mid end chip manufacturing. So the yields are low and the deffect rate is super high. And investing even 500 billion in to the sector is a drop of water in to an ocean that is needed. If China wants to replicate for example just the machines needed for manufacturing the top of the line chips and produce them themselves 500 billion is not enough. ASML alone is probably worth that much on top of all the other companies that help ASML build those machines or provide lasers, optical instruments, optical lenses etc. All that equipment is also basically high end that requires their own input and knowhow from many industries. In this sense, American 40 billion is nothing. Same goes for Chinese 500 billion, their problem is 10 times worse though.

In general, I think that the most modern chip manufacturing is not really possible without globalisation. It requires too many inputs from too many fields and no one country can have it all in this regard. And this is only one part of the topic. The 2nd part of the topic is once you have the chip manufactured then what about the software or the firmware? Is it developed? Is it adapted to work everywhere? What are the limitations? Is that software/firmware competitive compared to the others? Does it have all the features? Did you design the right thing in the first place so the software can be built?
In this regard you can watch at Intel struggling to produce graphics cards. Theoretically they can build them and theoretically they are not bad as a chip. But the problem then becomes what about the drivers? What about case x,y,z,x,c,v,b,n,m? You might have the best hardware in the world but nowadays firmware/software takes a lot of shortcuts in computations and so on to be folds more efficient than pure computation.

Do you think that is it? Lets say you have all the manufacturing equipment, all the services needed to build the chip in a competitive cost-effective manner. You have the designers and the competence to design it. You have the developers and engineers to make proper competitive software and firmware for it? We are done, right? Well not really. Now your design has to be tested against reality. The first test against reality is obviously security. All that hardware and design and firm/software is pretty pointless if its insecure and people won't use it. Since you just built all of that from scratch then highly likely your "product" will be littered with bugs and security vulnrabilities. You badly implemented the branch predictor and its possible to read the whole memory with some tricks? Well tough luck, time to fix this and loose large amount of your performance because otherwise your processor will be leaking senstive information because of a pure javascript.

Diversity or Biden has nothing to do with this. Chip manufacturing and making them competitive as an end product is just a very complicated field. 40 billion is nowhere near enough if you want to subsidize it. Heck China failed spectacularly with 500 billion.

[ingliz]

@JohnRawls

You don't need a high-end chip for most domestic appliances. So piling them high and selling them cheap is a good business model for China, which has captured a 17.5% global semiconductor market share worth $116 billion.

[JohnRawls]

@JohnRawls

You don't need a high-end chip for most domestic appliances. So piling them high and selling them cheap is a good business model for China, which has captured a 17.5% global semiconductor market share worth $116 billion.

Depends. If you are talking about your dishwasher then its low end. Good dishwasher or TV will use mid. If you are talking about your car then its mid or high end. Again depends on the item.

In general, since we are talking leadership positions here then you don't do 500 billion of investment to get a bit of low end that literally anyone can do and the manufacturers themselves are not really against moving some manufacturing to China. Most of that was just enterprises moving some of the production to China and not really that 500b Chinese homegrown companies.

One particular subject on this would be weapons actually, considering how war is developing right now in Ukraine. High End or Mid End should be super important. The next level of military weapons development are highend chips in drones that can do algorithm directed guidance I would say. That is something that requires high end, may be possible on mid end if really optimised. The reason for that is jamming. Algorithm/AI targeting is not possible to jam in most cases since its onboard cameras/sensors and no link to a person sitting in cover. Or at least not possible to jam how they are jammed right now.

[Saeko]

[JohnRawls]

https://twitter.com/NikkiBarnesFL/status/1772750155499868281/photo/1

CRT? Woke is understandable at least. DEI is diversity something probably.

You are laughing at this but you Americans definitely take this stuff over the edge and top. Hence why it is so easy to use this stuff as slogans against you. Most normal people do not care if you are black, white, yellow or whatever. You don't need to put minorities on a pedestal and worship them especially at the expense of whites. Just treat everyone like normal people and be friends or whatever or don't be friends it is up to you.

The main idea here is that treat people like people. Only idiots from fenced off neighborhoods from middle/high-middle/high class tend to worship minorities for some reason and try to exclude white people from movies, shows, whatever. That is a ridiculous behavior. How about instead of doing all that just find some real life friends from those communities and talk to them.

[Scamp]

Lowering standards in the name of diversity, or whatever, is asinine.
It use to be we took the best qualified individual for each job. Can't do that anymore.

[Tainari88]

► Show Spoiler

CRT? Woke is understandable at least. DEI is diversity something probably.

You are laughing at this but you Americans definitely take this stuff over the edge and top. Hence why it is so easy to use this stuff as slogans against you. Most normal people do not care if you are black, white, yellow or whatever. You don't need to put minorities on a pedestal and worship them especially at the expense of whites. Just treat everyone like normal people and be friends or whatever or don't be friends it is up to you.

The main idea here is that treat people like people. Only idiots from fenced off neighborhoods from middle/high-middle/high class tend to worship minorities for some reason and try to exclude white people from movies, shows, whatever. That is a ridiculous behavior. How about instead of doing all that just find some real life friends from those communities and talk to them.

John Rawls, you got to realize that last line of yours is the issue with the people with the over the top bullshit.

How about instead of doing all that just find some real life friends from those communities and talk to them.

They can't do it. Everything is a fake pose. That is what makes real friendship that is valuable very hard to do with anyone with the woke liberal agenda.

[wat0n]

CRT? Woke is understandable at least. DEI is diversity something probably.

You are laughing at this but you Americans definitely take this stuff over the edge and top. Hence why it is so easy to use this stuff as slogans against you. Most normal people do not care if you are black, white, yellow or whatever. You don't need to put minorities on a pedestal and worship them especially at the expense of whites. Just treat everyone like normal people and be friends or whatever or don't be friends it is up to you.

The main idea here is that treat people like people. Only idiots from fenced off neighborhoods from middle/high-middle/high class tend to worship minorities for some reason and try to exclude white people from movies, shows, whatever. That is a ridiculous behavior. How about instead of doing all that just find some real life friends from those communities and talk to them.

CRT is a legal theory that is basically the woke legal theory. DEI is also an application of woke stuff.

@Saeko is still right though, it's clear there are people in the right using these terms as a code word for the n-word. Just like others use "Zionist" for "Jew".