Where Does the Arrogance Start?

What strange source stokes the egos of these people?

A few months ago, Applied Materials (AMAT), long a leader in making chip manufacturing equipment, though recently seeming to have lost a step, announced it would build a new, $4 billion research and development facility in Silicon Valley. The plan was prompted in large part by the CHIPS Act promise of generous government support for semiconductor research and development.

Last week, AMAT announced it would scale back or cancel plans for the new facility, because… the government changed its mind. The government’s “CHIPS Program Office” announced it would “not move forward with its ‘third Notice of Funding Opportunity’ to build or upgrade “commercial R&D facilities in the United States at this time.”

Possibly you are asking, why? So did we. The announcement merely referred us to the CHIPS Office FAQ, which contained no relevant information.

What profound insights into state-of-the-art innovation in semiconductor technology prompted this cancellation, or for that matter the original offer? Who decided? Who lobbied? Could anyone in the U.S. government offer a reasonably concrete and quantified justification for either granting the money or withholding it?

Do they not think such decisions require thought, or knowledge, or experience, or judgement? Do they imagine that the business executives they casually supersede ever get to allocate—or withhold—capital on this scale without elaborate justification, and even then often get it wrong?

How much time and effort had AMAT execs put into planning this facility? How much money and mind were wasted on the effort?

Perhaps we have it wrong. Perhaps it is not arrogance but a bizarre and perverse humility. Maybe the government makes these decisions in such an appallingly capricious manner not from misplaced confidence in its own competence but because it assumes the businesses whose fates it decides are anyway run by people just as ignorant. Perhaps the bureaucrats, knowing how clueless they are, assume the people who ordinarily make these decisions must live in the same fog of ignorance, so it really doesn’t matter.

Meanwhile, in almost the same breath, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM) and the U.S. government announced TSM would be receiving a previously rumored $6.6 billion in CHIPS funding to support its circa $65 billion investment in its Arizona fabs.

The nearly 2,000-word announcement abounded in politician’s names, but not a single word justifying this particular investment. The one attempt at justification was a flat-out lie from our president, who lamented that the United States, which once produced nearly 40% of the world’s capacity, now makes “none of the most advanced chips.”

Has President Biden not heard of Intel (INTC)? Does he think it is a foreign company? Is there any record of the government’s rationale for investing in Intel’s leading competitor just as Intel is building its own foundry (contract manufacturing) business which, like TSM, will manufacture chips designed by other firms.

Actually, someone in the government must have heard of Intel because it is getting billions of dollars as well. In Washington, that’s called justice, as if a blindfold were a helpful investment tool.

The anticipated payoff for all this spewing of capital with no regard to market demand or the supply of talent is that five years from now we will not care very much if China takes Taiwan by violence.

We will care, a lot. Though TSM manufactures on four continents, the company relies heavily for its continued dominance on its Taiwanese “ecosystem.” That island is host to more than 1,000 semiconductor firms, employing some 600,000 workers. Most of these are small—only 155 are listed on the Taiwan exchange. Most of them make a living serving TSM with equipment or outsourced services.

More than 1,000 senior executives in Taiwan wake up every morning thinking about how they can do more to help themselves by helping TSM. Despite its global presence, TSM without Taiwan would be a far weaker company.

How about instead of pretending we can import Taiwan to America, we halt our economic war against China and particularly its semiconductor industry?

For five decades since the United States conceded that “there is one China and Taiwan is part of China,” the Chinese have refrained from retaking the island by force. Why?

The China hawks mock what they see as the foolishly idealistic tenet that trade discourages war. Amazingly, they cite China’s own behavior as evidence, characterizing that nation’s wholly admirable progress since the death of Mao as a “war” against the United States. Yet, surely, Chinese forbearance on Taiwan owes largely to its own consciousness of how much it gains from peaceful integration into the global trading system.

If Taiwan’s continued independence is so important, why have we decided to exile China from the very system that rewards its peaceful behavior toward what we ourselves long ago agreed is a rebellious province?

Do the hawks think Taiwan’s—and our prospects—will be improved by taunting China to a war in which our choices would be abandoning Taiwan or going to war with China and losing, as we surely would?

Do any of these people who speak of our being at war with China have any sense of what it means to be in a real war—and lose?

P.S. I will be at the Silicon Valley MoneyShow from May 7-9 and will be speaking on “The Graphene Moment and the Coming End of Silicon.” Click here to register, so you don’t miss out!