A lot of people misunderstand why companies outsource to Asia. It’s not just about cost—it’s actually more so about manufacturing expertise.
Asia has a massive pool of highly skilled manufacturing talent, and that kind of deep expertise is something the U.S. is quickly forgetting.
So my question is: with TSMC building a fab in the U.S., are Americans actually getting retrained in real manufacturing skills? Or are they just being taught to push the buttons TSMC tells them to push?
Was the US ever a major manufacturer of even pre-IC solid state electronics?
I was born in 1978 and was really into Heathkits and breadboard projects and stuff when I was a child and early teen. My dad was (and still is) an analog electronic engineer and gave me lots of surplus oscilloscopes and frequency counters and other coolness too. I distinctly remember often seeing "Made in Korea," "Made in Japan," "Made in Taiwan," etc. on circuit boards and chassis assemblies. The single word "Korea" was very common on components. This would have mostly been stuff from the late 1970s and 1980s.
At the very least it seems like electronics from at least the early-mid solid state era onward into the IC era has always been a globalized industry with a globalized supply chain. I feel like you've got to go back to vacuum tubes to find self-contained nationalized electronics industries.
Back then as now a lot of stuff was designed in the USA and Europe but manufactured elsewhere. Just like Asia has a ton of top tier manufacturing and logistics talent, the US and Europe have a ton of top tier design engineering and coding talent.
I still do agree that there is strategic value in making sure the US at least has some domestic capacity to manufacture leading-edge chips and electronics, not just to maintain some talent here but in case a major global conflict breaks out that deeply fractures all these supply chains. Same for Europe and any other country. China meanwhile would do well to develop its own domestic software and design talent pool.
It was called silicon valley for a reason. From the 1950s until the 1980s, the US was the dominate manufacturer of integrated circuits and the the origin of most fo the technology.
Everything started to globalize starting in the late 1970s to early 1980s which really kicked off with the end of the gold standard and the Volker Shock.
The Japanese and Germans, which had IC industry already, picked up steam and started to export as the economics changed.
China, Korea, Vietnam, etc. are recent entries (2000s)
There's a big difference in manufacturing between operators (the ones pushing the buttons), and plant engineers and designers. Assuming the process has been designed and built correctly, the button pushers can push buttons, and identify when not to push the buttons, and that's fine.
The US has plenty of manufacturing operations much more complicated than building CPUs, so of course we can do it. Manufacturing expertise in Asia (as I understand it) comes down more to macro-level processes, where different components might be built or raw ingredients sourced near each other, so further assembly can be done easier than any place in the United States.
The US has plenty of manufacturing operations much more complicated than building CPUs
It's my understanding that this is not the case. That CPU (and similar) manufacturing is considered one of the most complex processes humanity has ever developed. What are these plenty of manufacturing operations that are more complicated?
It really depends on which part of the process you focus on. CPU manufacturing is highly automated and not particularly logistically complex. You're correct that the machines used are just about the most sophisticated things ever built by human hands, but once they're installed and configured the process is fairly straightforward.
Compare this to, say, building a car. Much less automation, much simpler end product.
I dunno, it still sounds like a cost thing. Somehow all the places where people have "the right skills" happen to have very low wages, as long as they're stable countries. And some professions like automaking were much bigger in the US before they started outsourcing due to cost (unions factored in).
Asia has a massive pool of highly skilled manufacturing talent, and that kind of deep expertise is something the U.S. is quickly forgetting.
So my question is: with TSMC building a fab in the U.S., are Americans actually getting retrained in real manufacturing skills? Or are they just being taught to push the buttons TSMC tells them to push?