Chip Wars

 https://spectatorworld.com/topic/semiconductors-key-fight-china/

There is a joke in Taipei that if China invades Taiwan the best place to shelter is in microchip factories, the only places the People’s Liberation Army can’t afford to destroy. The country that controls advanced chips controls the future of technology — and Taiwan’s chip fabrication foundries (“fabs”) are the finest in the world. Successful reunification between the mainland and its renegade province would give China a virtual monopoly over the most advanced fabs. Given that Xi Jinping has made clear his intention to take control of Taiwan by 2032, it is no wonder that the American government is worried about the concentration of cutting-edge semiconductor technology on the island.

I tend to like those sort of dark humor jokes. I'm trying to develop one something like "Biden is building us back to a better stoneage". 

The idea is that with all of his attacks on energy production and now the rising tensions with both Russia and China, we may have some form of nuclear, or advanced drone, cyber, and almost certainly targeted mRNA viruses in our fairly near future.  

One statement that I often make is "The greater the efficiency in a system, the greater the fragility". It seems I ought to be able to quote someone on this fact, however it may just be too obvious for anyone with intelligence to write it down. (now we know where that leaves me)

Our supply chains are generally VERY efficient  "Just In Time" manufacturing with near zero inventory, and single source suppliers are very common. Have a pandemic, shut down a single link in your supply chain, and you can't produce your product. 

The whole article (short) is worth your time. Just consider this ... 

At present there is only one company in the world that can make lithography machines that print wafers at the five-nanometer gauge. Based in a nondescript suburb of Eindhoven in the Netherlands, Advanced Semiconductor Materials Lithography is perhaps the world’s least well-known hi-tech business. Yet it ranks just behind Shell as the fourth-largest company in Europe.

ASML’s highest tech machines use a process called “extreme ultraviolet” lithogra- phy, which makes them the only systems that can do lithography below 13.5 nanometers. The company produces approximately fifty machines a year at $150 million a pop (plus service contract). As a result, it owns that rare commodity — a market monopoly.

Why Things Bite Back, Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences

 https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/edward-tenner/why-things-bite-back/

This is a good book for people who believe "technology will solve everything". 

For people with a shred of common sense, it is a bunch of examples of what everyone knows. There are always side effects, trade offs, collateral damage, etc.  

Antibiotics create resistant strains. So do flu vaccines. The "experts" tell us that they will be weaker, but they used to tell us we can get Covid behind us. Perhaps the CDC should read this book and have a little humility -- when you take MASSIVE action with no longitudinal studies, we often find out that the "cure" is worse than the disease. 

Of course we have gotten to the point where considering potential unforeseen problems is a "conspiracy theory". 

On page 71, "A certain sense of well being was required before people could advance to a new level of worrying". 

We live in the age of anxiety. We stack "safety" on top of "safety" until life gets so "safe" and boring, that the suicide rate goes up. 

Page 28, "When the percentage of GNP devoted to medical care began it's sharp ascent in the late '50s, 92% of the decline in mortality in this century had already been achieved". 

The old Pareto principle (80/20) has become the 90/10 principle. Now 10% of the improvement takes 90% of the effort. And the idea of more people shuffling around with painful physical ailments or Alzheimer's really an "improvement"? Do you want to end up vacantly staring like Joe Biden?

"Experts" have severely wounded "common sense". It is so obvious it is amazing they may need a book like this, but it is highly unlikely they will even consider it. 

The human choice some ration of sknowin "Nothing about everything, or everything about nothing". We have a finite brain to deal with an effectively infinite universe. We have much to be humble about, but typically are not. 

Hoping Bureaucratic Sclerosis Kills The Patient

 https://www.businessinsider.com/china-trying-to-fix-engine-problem-plaguing-fighter-jets-2021-6

Bureaucratic sclerosis was a prime cause of IBM's decline from ruling the computer tech universe to being a poor also ran. Sadly, I saw it from the inside ... quarter to quarter management precluding somewhat risky innovation projects, "cover your ass" being primary over "bust your ass" to innovate, analysis paralysis ... we had it all.  "Buy it vs build it" with the assumption that the guys who built it were replaceable or buyable. 

Maybe China is showing the same signs? 

"They're better at just reverse-engineering simpler components and building simpler things," Heath said. "All this requires a level of expertise and competence that SOEs just often are not very good at. You have to recognize the limitations of the SOEs in China when it comes to innovation."

SOE -- State Owned Enterprise. As organizations become larger, the tendency to become ponderous bureaucracies is strong to possibly inevitable. The same thing is happening to Western civilization, and the exceptions like Elon Musk are becoming more and more rare. Apple used to have "think different" as a motto, today it is more like "think how to keep our profits large". The organization doesn't have to be "state owned" to develop this disease -- just being PC, Woke, too convinced it was "management for managements sake" rather than deep tech wizardry that let to success, etc. can also kill the patient. 

The linked is an interesting discussion on how and why SOEs tend to fail when it gets to the really difficult stuff. 

"There are a few technologies that are really at the apex of technological manufacturing," and jet engines are one of them, Timothy Heath, a senior international and defense researcher at the Rand Corporation think tank, told Insider.

"These high-end technologies are so difficult to master that very few countries succeed. Many have failed," Heath added.

Here is hoping that bureaucracy kills SOEs faster than just "Woke" fascist states!