Britain's Semiconductor Plan Goes AWOL as US and EU Splash Billions (politico.eu) 79
As nations around the world scramble to secure crucial semiconductor supply chains over fears about relations with China, the U.K. is falling behind. From a report: The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the world's heavy reliance on Taiwan and China for the most advanced chips, which power everything from iPhones to advanced weapons. For the past two years, and amid mounting fears China could kick off a new global security crisis by invading Taiwan, Britain's government has been readying a plan to diversify supply chains for key components and boost domestic production. Yet according to people close to the strategy, the U.K.'s still-unseen plan -- which missed its publication deadline last fall -- has suffered from internal disconnect and government disarray, setting the country behind its global allies in a crucial race to become more self-reliant.
A lack of experience and joined-up policy-making in Whitehall, a period of intense political upheaval in Downing Street, and new U.S. controls on the export of advanced chips to China, have collectively stymied the U.K.'s efforts to develop its own coherent plan. The way the strategy has been developed so far "is a mistake," said a former senior Downing Street official. During the pandemic, demand for semiconductors outstripped supply as consumers flocked to sort their home working setups. That led to major chip shortages -- soon compounded by China's tough "zero-COVID" policy. Since a semiconductor fabrication plant is so technologically complex -- a single laser in a chip lithography system of German firm Trumpf has 457,000 component parts -- concentrating manufacturing in a few companies helped the industry innovate in the past. But everything changed when COVID-19 struck.
A lack of experience and joined-up policy-making in Whitehall, a period of intense political upheaval in Downing Street, and new U.S. controls on the export of advanced chips to China, have collectively stymied the U.K.'s efforts to develop its own coherent plan. The way the strategy has been developed so far "is a mistake," said a former senior Downing Street official. During the pandemic, demand for semiconductors outstripped supply as consumers flocked to sort their home working setups. That led to major chip shortages -- soon compounded by China's tough "zero-COVID" policy. Since a semiconductor fabrication plant is so technologically complex -- a single laser in a chip lithography system of German firm Trumpf has 457,000 component parts -- concentrating manufacturing in a few companies helped the industry innovate in the past. But everything changed when COVID-19 struck.
A waste of resources (Score:2)
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I think they are rightly worried the EU's CHIPS industry will be so entangled with Chinese supplied parts and equipment that they would be unable to be a reliable partner in the event of a real row with China even if they tried.
The EU from what I can tell is being completely irresponsible on this issue.
Re: A waste of resources (Score:1)
When the EU decide to manufacture their own chips they will rely on those and the role they will fill. Right now production is shifting to new centers and they know Intel and AMD are not going anywhere since if they continue to produce they will be industry leaders for the foreseeable future.
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The most worrying thing to me is that Washington looks like it's been preparing to go to war with China for decades now.
It drives me nuts when people assume that, when the US military planning and/or preparing for conflict with another country, power, or groups of them, it's intending to actually DO that.
The US military is planning and preparing for this ALL THE TIME, against EVERYBODY. (Also planning attacks on the US, its allies, and/or its enemies from outside.) If they're not doing ALL of thei this th
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"... and preparing ..."
If you're attacked, what good are plans with no tools or personnel to implement them? China would be right to call the US a "paper tiger".
The US and it's allies have had the Soviet Union or its remnants surrounded by massive quantities of live tools for nuclear and conventional annihilation since the start of the Cold War. And we haven't actually USED them on them yet - at least until they invaded Ukraine, after which Biden and Western Europe have been handing the latter progressive
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Re:A waste of resources (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're going to treat chip supply as an economic and military weapon then you have to secure your own. The US wants to block China from settling any old scores, but they really want to suppress a rising economic competitor, same as they did in the 80s with Japan. Europe wants to be able to pursue its own policies, potentially independently of the US, and probably sees its own economy as a potential target if they're too successful.
The UK recently decided that they also want to be able to set policy independent of Europe, so in a world with third party sanctions and economic warfare you have to secure your strategic resources.
Re:A waste of resources (Score:5, Insightful)
The UK "leadership" is still trying to pretend the UK is self-sufficient and that Brexit hence was a great idea. They are desparate to prevent people from realizing how badly they were lied to and how severely they got screwed over. And that they got screwed over by people that are too rich to be really affected.
Re:A waste of resources (Score:4, Interesting)
Wake up, please. Have some coffee, and actually READ WORLD NEWS.
Do you even know what Brexit was, and what the results have been?
And I can't *imagine* why they didn't get their plan out last year... um, well, let's ignore three PMs in six months, and the head of lettuce (with a blond wig) that outlasted one. Let's ignore that every one of them were libertarian fantasists, with no actual intelligence or knowledge. Let's ignore the strike, today, that's shutting down much of the country, because of inflation, and job shortages.
No, I can't figure it out....
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The sad reality is that Brexiteers in many ways got what they wanted; they just did not think about the consequences. For example, if the UK leaves the EU, then all those foreigners working in the UK would have to leave. And that happened. What they failed to realize the reality of why those foreigners were in the country; there were/are many jobs that their citizens simply did not want nor willing in the to take.
For example, farm labor is hard manual work with long hours and meager pay. A vast majority of
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The ultra wealthy did really well out if brexit. Recessions don't hurt them, in fact they help force down wages and conditions so they can make even more money. At worst they can just move their investments to other jurisdictions, or wait it out. It's not like they are living paycheck to paycheck.
Isolating British consumers and workers makes them easier to exploit.
Re:A waste of resources (Score:4, Informative)
At a glance, yes. If the UK was still in the EU, they would stand much more of a chance getting materials from the EU as well as exporting chips. The difference between the UK and China is that while the UK does not have trade bans that China has, they have trade restrictions due to Brexit.
For example, cutting edge EUV lithography machines come from one company in the Netherlands, ASML. While the UK has no political barriers to buy those machines, they will pay more due to tariffs than a German chip company unless these machines are written in some exemption. At $150M+ per machine, the tariffs are significant.
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All those factors aren't ideal but surmountable if you know how.
And when did I say they were? A tariff of tens of millions of dollars on a single machine is an obstacle.
A massively complex endeavour as setting up even old-process fabs with supporting infrastructure, like growing your own crystals for wafers, or even down to ultra-pure water?
That depends on how much vertical integration required but these days it is not required that every single chip fab makes their own wafers. Companies and countries all over the world do that with some in the US. As for ultra-pure water, that is a necessary requirement of all chip fabs.
"It's Just Too Hard, guv." No surprise, since these days it involves the metric system.
And what the hell does that mean? The entire fab industry uses metric as standard even US fabs like Intel use metric.
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Why UK is falling behind... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's because they were a dumbass and decided that brexit was a good thing. Now no one wants to invest in UK, because it doesn't even help with entering into the EU market.
Re:Why UK is falling behind... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the correct answer. All those people who voted yes are suddenly saying
This isn't what I voted for!
Did their wish of fewer brown people come true?
Re:Why UK is falling behind... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the correct answer. All those people who voted yes are suddenly saying
This isn't what I voted for!
Did their wish of fewer brown people come true?
But, it exactly is what they voted for. And they are getting exactly what they voted for.
It's a very strange thing that idiotic schemes like Brexit and MAGA, turn out exactly like a person with a functioning brain cell knows it will turn out.
So the old adages of "Play stupid games - win stupid prizes" and "Fuck around and find out"are in full force.
So we sit in the backyard, enjoying our Tequila shots and munching popcorn.
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That is what they voted for. And it was really obvious to anybody that did minimal due diligence before deciding about their vote. You cannot act on the the level of a child and then complain about the effects of your vote. Some personal maturity required.
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Actually they have fewer white people now, but more brown people instead.
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This is Slashdot, not Wikipedia.
https://letmegooglethat.com/?q... [letmegooglethat.com]
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We CaN dO iT aLl By OuR sElVeS!
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Not just investment. It's hard to get the staff now we don't have freedom of movement. Hard to get the materials in and the products out, now we have a customs border with the EU.
Worst government (Score:5, Insightful)
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Eh, your NHS will get proper funding for a change at least. One of the prides of the UK has been underfunded by the conservatives for quite some time and is now facing some serious problems because of that from what I read and hear from Brits I know.
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That's all on point but all that means is that it is even more important for NHS spending to be increased to match levels seen in other European countries https://www.health.org.uk/news... [health.org.uk] and I would expect Labour to provide that well before the Tories ever would.
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What? Quote the text, I do not see that in the report.
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The worst kind!? I'd take inaction over our (the US') last conservative government any day of the week.
We got the bigly worstest, belieb me! (Score:1)
> the UK has the worst kind of conservative government
In the US ours attempted a coup. The only way to top that is have a successful coup.
Re: We got the bigly worstest, belieb me! (Score:1)
It helps if you can correctly identify a coup. Jan 6 wasn't it.
Brexit makes everything harder (Score:5, Insightful)
Brexit is making everything harder for them. The UK is not big enough to compete in this kind of complicated and expensive materials science race. The EU is, and the UK could have helped the EU in this race.
But they chose to go-it-alone. And how is that working out for them?
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Brexit is making everything harder for them. The UK is not big enough to compete in this kind of complicated and expensive materials science race. The EU is, and the UK could have helped the EU in this race.
But they chose to go-it-alone. And how is that working out for them?
Exactly as it should go for them. I mean the effects of Brexit were pretty obvious, so this is exactly what the voters demanded.
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Probably no. The UK has two rational paths forward.
1) Rejoin the EU (which surprisingly the EU seems open to), or 2) Join NAFTA.
I honestly think that joining NAFTA was the UK establishment's plan with Brexit, they just didn't tell NAFTA. It wouldn't be a bad plan at all, in fact would be a great move for the UK. But if that was ever the plan they have screwed it up so much that it's hard to imagine NAFTA accepting them at this point.
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But they chose to go-it-alone. And how is that working out for them?
Pretty much as expected: Very, very badly. I predict that in 10 to 20 years the UK will come crawling back and ask for EU membership. I hope these cretins do not get any special conditions that time though.
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I don't think closing the country to foreign workers snd students does either.
I don't think becoming a world laughing stock does either.
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Foreign workers and students are still welcome and are still coming, pretty much as per any 'western' country that's attempting to control its borders. There is less casual migration from within the EU and some companies are struggling with a reduction in available cheap labour.
(Probably the most insidious impact has been an unfavourable shift in the exchange rate, wh
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https://graphics.reuters.com/BRITAIN-EU/ECONOMY/gkplwdmdbvb/chart.png
Yes, students have stopped coming, and you admit workers have:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/brexit-eu-university-students-uk-b2021553.html
Yes, people laugh at the UK now. And rightly so.
Blue passports, son, blue passports.
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Universities still have their capacity of lucrative overseas students. An article in 'The Independent' stating a 40% r
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NOPE.
So if univesities still get foreign students, nothing can have happened to reduce the number of foreign students?
NOPE.
If you want to pretend to represent those who saw through the populist Brexit bullshit, who saw what a disaster it would be for the UK, who see now what a disaster it IS for the UK, then you'd better work harder at reconciling your nonsense with the facts of what Brexit IS DOING to the UK.
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You think the problems the NHS has, for example, or the massive raise in use of food-banks in the UK are edge cases? Well, I cannot really tell from first-hand experience, I only get the (likely skewed) media stories, but that seems to be a bit of an extreme assessment of the situation.
prepare to be outbid (Score:2)
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Yeah, because that has worked so well in the past. Companies took the money, but they did not move things to the US...
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They can turn Taiwan into one giant Denny's restaurant for all the US cares once an equivalent chip maker is established on US soil.
And yet they still failed to establish even one. I wonder why...
Opportunities to buy global power with nothing but cash do not come around often.
Oh, so that's why. It 2023 already but Americans still think that they can solve any problem by just printing more fiat money.
blue sky (Score:2)
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We just need to sit this one out period. When the CHIPS act and the EU equivalent end up being proven to be expensive and wasteful mega-subsidies that distort the market, raise prices for consumers, and burn billions of dollars of your tax dollars in the process, and China doesn't actually invade Taiwan after all, doing nothing will prove to be the best strategy, and our incompetent government will have failed successfully once again.
Of course if China does invade Taiwan, then we're royally fucked, but hey,
Re: blue sky (Score:2)
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The UK claimed it was striving to be the next Silicon Valley ...
EVERYBODY claims they are striving to be the next Silicon Valley. So far have any of them managed? Not so much.
(I have my own ideas about what they're doing wrong, but then so do a lot of other people. I don't claim to be sure I have the recipe for the secret sauce, or even the major flavor ingredient.)
The British ... (Score:2)
AWOL? (Score:2)
Advanced chips are not the problem (Score:3)
There was a bit of a shortage of advanced chips during the worst of COVID19 but that is all but over(and there is probably already a bit of overproduction). These advanced chip plants that various world governments seem to be throwing money at companies to build will not be needed unless there is some massive economic boom coming.
The real problem is a shortage of old/low tech chips, so if governments want to help they should be encouraging the building of more old generation chip fabs.
see https://www.electronicdesign.c... [electronicdesign.com]
quote:Supply woes will continue for large swathes of the electronics industry into 2023, largely due to a dearth of less-advanced analog, power, and logic chips that are pinching the industrial, automotive, and other sectors.
quote:Chip giants from Intel and Micron to NVIDIA and Qualcomm are all feeling the pinch of plunging demand for chips, which is infecting most of the market for smartphones, personal computers, and other consumer goods. Executives have said the sudden swing in demand was driven by many of their customers having built up bloated inventories of CPUs, GPUs, and memory chips, the latest sign that demand is falling out of step with supply.
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Split off a consortium (Score:1)
To solve this they probably should decide to agree to hand off chip decisions to a smaller consortium of representatives from the major parties (at least). They'd then get the fist fights over with quicker and move on.
Want the Brexit Genius' vote? (Score:2)
More rat, son?
I remember the days when the UK... (Score:2)
...was producing some great gear, but all the hardware makers were under capitalised. I remember doing some work on Transputer concurrent CPU boards, but it wasn't long before development stalled under the bureaucratic weight of the company being merged and merged again with larger hardware companies until the residual IP was sold to the US. I think I still have the transputer instruction set reference and the Occam language reference packed away under the house.
Don't mention the B word (Score:2)