ASML Holding and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. have ways to disable the world’s most advanced chip-making machines in the event that China invades Taiwan, according to people familair with the matter.
no, you’re thinking about it wrong. The whole point of a doomsday machine is useless if it’s countered by simply being known about.
China knowing how TSMC has their delete key working, shouldn’t make a fucking difference, on whether or not it works. If it does, it’s not a very good delete key, because china probably already knows how it works, as well as the US.
Or, this sounds like tactical planning in case of an invasion, to prevent access of valuable resources to the invaders. Making it “need to know” makes perfect sense.
yeah but that’s the problem though. It shouldn’t matter, why do you think the US is public about where it’s nuclear reactors are located?
Why do you think every country with nuclear weapons is open about having them? It’s not because it’s a detriment if others know about it, it’s a detriment if others have them.
China knowing about it merely makes it a MAD system. China knowing how it works would ensure that it’s almost impossible for them to actually take over the plant, assuming TSMC isn’t hiring idiots to run opsec.
i wonder if this also includes trying to physically damage the machinery in order to ensure one hell of a time getting it back online, because theoretically once you wipe it, you can just start smashing shit together that shouldn’t be smashed together lol.
What would be better is polluting the software with invalid but still plausible constraints, so the chips would seem OK and might work for days or weeks but would fail in the field… especially if these chips are used in weapon systems or critical infrastructure.
this is, decent. The problem here is that it’s almost always easier to reverse engineer a system that’s partially constructed, than it is one that’s completely deconstructed.
You would ideally want to delete ALL software, and ALL hardware running that software, that would be MUCH harder to reverse engineer. Or at the very least, significantly more expensive.
although i imagine building chips to fail is almost an impossible thing. Cpus almost never die, unless you blow them up with too much power lol.
true, you could just blast the ever living shit out the circuitry, rendering it completely non functional. That’s another good one for sensors and shit as well.
well for one, it would take probably 10 or 20 years to get to that point in chinas domestic manufacturing. As well as geopolitical situation.
They would have very little reason to invade taiwan at that point. So they probably wouldn’t.
And to foil your plan a little bit, the US has spent billions of dollars in recent years constructing new TSMC and i believe intel fabs in america, there’s a big one in arizona. And idk where the other one is off the top of my head. But we’re already chinas biggest competition in that regard.
i guess but even then it would still have massive political implications, including the US, which is incredibly messy. And taiwan itself wouldn’t be very happy about it.
Extrinsic factors are the most important ones for this kind of stuff, it’s why the vietnam war failed for us.
They already are, Intel is building new foundries in NA with government funding specifically for the purpose of not relying on Taiwan for chips. The problem though is TSMC has the smallest and most efficient chip dies, so everyone wants those chips, Intel still has a ways to catch up.
But Intel has long since fallen behind the pack of semiconductor manufacturers. If they could just do their own Taiwanese foundry, they’d have done it by now and reaped comparable boosts in revenue.
As it stands, China is the majority manufacturer of semiconductors - responsible for more than half of all chips produced - because they’re building foundries far faster and at higher quality than their American peers at Intel.
Taiwan is the only country keeping pace with China. Losing them would only strengthen the Chinese export market.
As it stands, China is the majority manufacturer of semiconductors - responsible for more than half of all chips produced - because they’re building foundries far faster and at higher quality than their American peers at Intel.
the reason why they produce half of all semi conductors, probably has more to do with the type of semi conductors they produce, mainly IC chips. As opposed to things like CPUs and GPUs, they’ve only recently started getting into that space. The intels and TSMCs of the world produce highly optimized designs and fab processes specifically for things like CPUs and GPUs.
A chip with 8 and gates on it is probably vastly easier to produce than an 8088 cpu, for example.
yeah, and they’ve released a couple gpus recently, all of which have been about 10 years behind in technology, and CPUs, domestically manufactured ones, are about 1-2 decades behind. Excluding intels domestic chinese cpus.
i assume by disable they probably mean, something along the lines of irreversibly contaminating the whole of the assembly line.
I’d be curious to know how specifically they’re going about this.
Ok winnie the pooh, like they are going to tell you
i mostly asked because other people would almost certainly have better ideas.
Besides, if whatever they’re doing wouldn’t stand up to “being public knowledge” it’s not a very sound plan lmao.
“The whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost if you keep it a secret!”
no, you’re thinking about it wrong. The whole point of a doomsday machine is useless if it’s countered by simply being known about.
China knowing how TSMC has their delete key working, shouldn’t make a fucking difference, on whether or not it works. If it does, it’s not a very good delete key, because china probably already knows how it works, as well as the US.
You need to watch Dr. Strangelove or: how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb by Stanley Kubrik friend.
probably, i’m just repeating standard rules of security practice though. If it’s only secure because someone doesn’t know about it. It’s not secure.
I highly doubt TSMC is doing anything less than the state of the art practices with regards to this problem.
Or, this sounds like tactical planning in case of an invasion, to prevent access of valuable resources to the invaders. Making it “need to know” makes perfect sense.
yeah but that’s the problem though. It shouldn’t matter, why do you think the US is public about where it’s nuclear reactors are located?
Why do you think every country with nuclear weapons is open about having them? It’s not because it’s a detriment if others know about it, it’s a detriment if others have them.
China knowing about it merely makes it a MAD system. China knowing how it works would ensure that it’s almost impossible for them to actually take over the plant, assuming TSMC isn’t hiring idiots to run opsec.
Probably wiping process control code from the systems that contain tons of fiddly hard to find constants and other information.
Well that’s less fun than detcord or mission impossible style self-immolating electronics.
Yes, but Taiwan is not China and they need to be able to do that even if there are people in the building.
i wonder if this also includes trying to physically damage the machinery in order to ensure one hell of a time getting it back online, because theoretically once you wipe it, you can just start smashing shit together that shouldn’t be smashed together lol.
What would be better is polluting the software with invalid but still plausible constraints, so the chips would seem OK and might work for days or weeks but would fail in the field… especially if these chips are used in weapon systems or critical infrastructure.
this is, decent. The problem here is that it’s almost always easier to reverse engineer a system that’s partially constructed, than it is one that’s completely deconstructed.
You would ideally want to delete ALL software, and ALL hardware running that software, that would be MUCH harder to reverse engineer. Or at the very least, significantly more expensive.
although i imagine building chips to fail is almost an impossible thing. Cpus almost never die, unless you blow them up with too much power lol.
I’m really hoping for thermite. A lot of thermite.
thermites a good one, not quite instantaneous, but still pretty good.
Would certainly be a good counter for hardware.
They could probably overload the circuitry to make it unusable. Or use like, IDK, mini explosives?
true, you could just blast the ever living shit out the circuitry, rendering it completely non functional. That’s another good one for sensors and shit as well.
What happened if… purely hypothetically… China develops competitive chip fabrication plants that exports at scales rivalrious to Taiwan.
And then fear of an invasion provokes detonation of Taiwan’s own facilities.
Wouldn’t this turn China into a domestically source monopoly of high end chips?
It’s easier said than done. A few key pieces took decades to figure out and even now many can only be produced by one or two companies, like ASML.
SMIC makes 5nm chips and is on the cusp of 3nm.
well for one, it would take probably 10 or 20 years to get to that point in chinas domestic manufacturing. As well as geopolitical situation.
They would have very little reason to invade taiwan at that point. So they probably wouldn’t.
And to foil your plan a little bit, the US has spent billions of dollars in recent years constructing new TSMC and i believe intel fabs in america, there’s a big one in arizona. And idk where the other one is off the top of my head. But we’re already chinas biggest competition in that regard.
Not about actually needing a reason to invade, it’s about the implication
i guess but even then it would still have massive political implications, including the US, which is incredibly messy. And taiwan itself wouldn’t be very happy about it.
Extrinsic factors are the most important ones for this kind of stuff, it’s why the vietnam war failed for us.
The US will rebuild their chip manufacturing somewhere else
lol, where?
domestically in the US? We’re literally already doing that.
We are nowhere near supplying chip demands for the US domestically, lol.
you asked where, not how, when, or to what level.
They have some parts of the supply chain in ROK, and they could move to Vietnam but they would likely want to be further away from China
It’s extremely inconvenient but it’s more convenient than going to war with China
They already are, Intel is building new foundries in NA with government funding specifically for the purpose of not relying on Taiwan for chips. The problem though is TSMC has the smallest and most efficient chip dies, so everyone wants those chips, Intel still has a ways to catch up.
But Intel has long since fallen behind the pack of semiconductor manufacturers. If they could just do their own Taiwanese foundry, they’d have done it by now and reaped comparable boosts in revenue.
As it stands, China is the majority manufacturer of semiconductors - responsible for more than half of all chips produced - because they’re building foundries far faster and at higher quality than their American peers at Intel.
Taiwan is the only country keeping pace with China. Losing them would only strengthen the Chinese export market.
Taiwan is part of the US’s chip manufacturing supply chain
the reason why they produce half of all semi conductors, probably has more to do with the type of semi conductors they produce, mainly IC chips. As opposed to things like CPUs and GPUs, they’ve only recently started getting into that space. The intels and TSMCs of the world produce highly optimized designs and fab processes specifically for things like CPUs and GPUs.
A chip with 8 and gates on it is probably vastly easier to produce than an 8088 cpu, for example.
The Rise of China GPU Makers: AI and Tech Sovereignty Drive New GPU Entrants
yeah, and they’ve released a couple gpus recently, all of which have been about 10 years behind in technology, and CPUs, domestically manufactured ones, are about 1-2 decades behind. Excluding intels domestic chinese cpus.
Probably wipe the firmware of the machines so they can’t be used.
(Fun fact: FIRMware is the in-between of HARDware and SOFTware.)
moderately chubbed ware
As someone who spends a lot of their job testing and implementing firmware upgrades… I will do my utmost to slip this into at least one meeting.
thank god, my stupid internet comments are finally going somewhere important.