Its also not fair to compare AI firms with others using growth because AI is a novel technology. Why would there be explosive growth in rideshare apps when its a mature niche with established incumbents?
I think the explosive growth that people want is in manufacturing. Ex: US screws, bolts, rivets, dies, pcbs, assembly and such.
The dollars are being diverted elsewhere.
Intel a chip maker who can directly serve the AI boom, has failed to deploy its 2nm or 1.8nm fabs and instead written them off. The next generation fabs are failing. So even as AI gets a lot of dollars it doesn't seem to be going to the correct places.
They're not going to get it. The political economy of East Asia is simply better suited for advanced manufacturing. The US wants the manufacturing of East Asia without its politics. Sometimes for good reason - being an export economy has its downsides!
Taiwan isn't some backwater island making low skilled items.
USA lost mass manufacturing (screws and rivets and zippers), but now we are losing cream of the crop world class manufacturing (Intel vs TSMC).
If we cannot manufacture then we likely cannot win the next war. That's the politics at play. The last major war between industrialized nations shows that technology and manufacturing was the key to success. Now I don't think USA has to manufacture all by itself, but it needs a reasonable plan to get every critical component in our supply chain.
In WW2, that pretty much all came down to ball bearings. The future is hard to predict but maybe it's chips next time.
Maybe we give up on the cheapest of screws or nails. But we need to hold onto elite status on some item.
> Taiwan isn't some backwater island making low skilled items.
Definitely not! Wasn't trying to imply this.
> If we cannot manufacture then we likely cannot win the next war.
If you think a war is imminent (a big claim!), then our only chance is to partner with specialized allies that set up shop here (e.g. Taiwan, Japan, South Korea). Trying to resurrect Intel's vertically integrated business model to compete with TSMC's contractor model is a mistake, IMO.
I think this is a gross oversimplification and an incorrect assessment of the US’ economic manufacturing capabilities.
The US completely controls critical steps of the chip making process as well as the production of the intellectual property needed to produce competitive chips, and the lithography machines are controlled by a close ally that would abide by US sanctions.
The actual war planes and ships and missiles are of course still built in the USA. Modern warfare with stuff that China makes like drones and batteries only gets you so far. They can’t make a commercially competitive aviation jet engine without US and Western European suppliers.
And the US/NAFTA has a ton of existing manufacturing capability in a lot of the “screws and rivets” categories. For example, there are lots of automotive parts and assembly companies in the US. The industry isn’t as big as it used to be but it’s still significant. The US is the largest manufacturing exporter besides China.
Indeed. Just now our kid's therapist told us they are moving out from current school district because some chemical plant is coming up near by. More than pollution it is the attitude that any kind physical product factory is blight on Disney-fied suburbia and its white collar folks.
>I think the explosive growth that people want is in manufacturing. Ex: US screws, bolts, rivets, dies, pcbs, assembly and such.
And the [only] way to get that explosive growth is robotics. That is the Post-Post-Industrial Revolution that we're stepping into - it is when manufacturing stops being separate from the knowledge-based economy and instead becomes a part of it aa a form of an output, specifically a physical-world form of output from the knowledge-based economy.
>The dollars are being diverted elsewhere.
The dollars are going in exactly right direction - AI. After LLM the companies like NVDA and Google are making next steps - foundational world models and robotics.
>Intel a chip maker who can directly serve the AI boom
Intel is a managers' gravy train - just like for example Sun Microsystems was 20 years ago. Forget about it.
>Intel ... has failed to deploy its 2nm or 1.8nm fabs and instead written them off. So even as AI gets a lot of dollars it doesn't seem to be going to the correct places.
The dollars go to NVDA instead of Intel. Seems exactly to correct place.
While the USA spent a $trillion on LLMs, China spent the past two decades mass making chip shooters and pick and place machines like above.
Your LLMs aren't even fast enough to process or compete vs 15year old technology.
Now USA has pick and place machines and other such equipment. But we are slower and we don't have nearly as many. And despite better software here in the USA out setup costs are far higher (jlcpcb orders are prewired up with premade libraries because of huge volumes of orders. USA has fewer orders and thus requires a human to setup each line).
