Thursday, December 2nd 2021
Intel CEO Asks US Government for More Backing, Calls Taiwan Not Stable
Since Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger joined the company earlier this year, the messaging language from Intel has changed radically, as it has become a no-nonsense message of Intel going back to its roots as a leading foundry and a leading chip maker. However, Gelsinger might've overstepped a little bit as of lately, as during a conference in California, he went on record saying that Intel deserves special treatment by the US government, in favor of some of its competitors.
At the same time, it's not hard to see why Intel thinks the US government should favor it and other US companies like Micron and Texas Instruments, over Samsung and TSMC. However, Intel's selling argument here is that investing in non-US companies means that the R&D money and IP ends up abroad, which isn't entirely true when it comes to foundries. Gelsinger also complained about the fact that Samsung and TSMC was getting large government subsidies in their home countries and claimed that because of those subsidies, Intel was competing with Korea and Taiwan, rather than with Samsung and TSMC.
As if that wasn't enough, Gelsinger went on to call Taiwan "not a stable place" due to the current situation between the PRC and Taiwan. He also highlighted the fact that the PRC is infringing on Taiwan's air defence identification zone (ADIZ) on a regular basis, with as many as 27 military aircraft encroaching on a single day. It should be noted that the Taiwan ADIZ actually stretches well inside the PRC, although the areas that the PRC normally enter that are being reported are quite close to Taiwan, rather than flights over PRC territory.
The US government still hasn't reached a conclusion on the CHIPS Act, which is meant to set aside as much as US$52 billion for chipmakers in the US. There's no secret that Intel wants a large share of that money, deservedly so or not. As Intel is slowly moving towards offering foundry services, it makes sense that they would need to invest even more heavily into building foundries, since as we know, there simply aren't enough cutting edge foundries at the moment and too many companies are fighting over the cutting edge nodes these days. That said, scare tactics isn't the way forward, instead Intel should show that they can operate a foundry business just as well as its competitors and try to win over business from them, as that's how you show that you deserve both the business and the investment.
Sources:
Taiwan News, image courtesy of @PGelsinger
At the same time, it's not hard to see why Intel thinks the US government should favor it and other US companies like Micron and Texas Instruments, over Samsung and TSMC. However, Intel's selling argument here is that investing in non-US companies means that the R&D money and IP ends up abroad, which isn't entirely true when it comes to foundries. Gelsinger also complained about the fact that Samsung and TSMC was getting large government subsidies in their home countries and claimed that because of those subsidies, Intel was competing with Korea and Taiwan, rather than with Samsung and TSMC.
The US government still hasn't reached a conclusion on the CHIPS Act, which is meant to set aside as much as US$52 billion for chipmakers in the US. There's no secret that Intel wants a large share of that money, deservedly so or not. As Intel is slowly moving towards offering foundry services, it makes sense that they would need to invest even more heavily into building foundries, since as we know, there simply aren't enough cutting edge foundries at the moment and too many companies are fighting over the cutting edge nodes these days. That said, scare tactics isn't the way forward, instead Intel should show that they can operate a foundry business just as well as its competitors and try to win over business from them, as that's how you show that you deserve both the business and the investment.
128 Comments on Intel CEO Asks US Government for More Backing, Calls Taiwan Not Stable
USA doesn't need hypersonic missiles. Our enemies don't build "Iron Domes" or "AEGIS Cruisers", or "Patriot Missiles". Why would we create a Mach 5 missile that evades missile defenses, when our enemies are going with the "don't build a missile defense" strategy?
Our hypersonic capabilities are there only in case our enemies start developing missile shields of their own. Otherwise, our gameplan is "smack them with 100 Tomahawks", which are relatively cheap and very effective. In fact: the main problem with Hypersonic is that a singular Hypersonic missile is more than 10x the cost of a Tomahawk. Meaning, its more cost-effective to launch 10x Tomahawks simultaneously and hope that the enemy's defenses can't deal with it.
EDIT: The reason why super-expensive hypersonic missiles work for China, is because the USA has $13 Billion dollar Gerald Ford Aircraft "Supercarriers" floating around (plus the cost of all the airplanes and personnel on board). In contrast, China has no such high-value target. Any hypersonic missile we'd develop is more expensive than any ship China has ever made. There's no point.There's different levels of stealth.
Our F35 probably will pop up on enemy radar screens, just like the Chinese counterpart. If they know that its coming, but if they can't shoot it down in time, the F35 will do its job and come home safely. Same thing with the Chinese counter-part, its not about being "secret", its about avoiding the "lock on" from modern missiles or modern CRAMs.
In contrast, F22 "stealth fighter" and B2 "stealth bombers" are aiming to be completely invisible to radar. Except their paint is so finicky that the F22 and B2 planes are a pain in the ass to take care of and maintain.
Any stealth capability means that US Patriot missiles will become less reliable at gunning down the airplanes. Normally, if we shot 100 Patriot missiles, we'd probably expect to kill 90+ enemy airplanes. However, if they have stealth capabilities, maybe our 100 missiles will only kill 50 of them, as the lock-on system fails spuriously. An F22 or B2 bomber would never get into this situation to begin with, but the mass produced airplanes have a fundamentally different mission...
Its more about a numbers game, cost-effectiveness and the like. Its not perfect stealth, just enough to cut down the efficacy of enemy weapons a notch.China's Navy currently outnumbers the US Navy in terms of Ships.
media.defense.gov/2021/Nov/03/2002885874/-1/-1/0/2021-CMPR-FINAL.PDF
That's 571 Chinese Ships,
vs the US Navy of ~500 ships(EDIT: My ship count was wrong, see below). China already outnumber the USA, let alone Japan, and China continues to mass produce even more ships as we speak.China will outnumber us with "lesser" ships. In the open-seas, I'm pretty sure the USA will beat China's Navy, but China's missile-force has been conducting some very troublesome tests. There's no guarantee that our Supercarriers will survive a fight against China's Missiles.
US Navy is better than Chinese Navy (for now and the foreseeable future). But US Navy vs Chinese MissileForce + Chinese Navy.... that's an open question.
-------
EDIT: I probably should post US Numbers: sgp.fas.org/crs/weapons/RL32665.pdf
This is the combined forces of US Navy + US Marines. We got 355 ships vs the 571 ships of China. Now each of our ships are probably "better" than Chinese ships. Those Amphibious ships of the US Marines are practically small-carriers (F35B launch from them, while US Marines storm the beaches).
But as it stands right now, we're already outnumbered by the Chinese Navy, and the Chinese Navy continues to build more and more ships. They're clearly planning something: either a bluff (is this just a diplomatic game to them??) or maybe a serious invasion of Taiwan.
One of the problems I see with the US military is a lot of the spending is wasteful. We have the world's largest military budget, yet a lot of it ends up lining corporate/hidden pockets.
The DF-21 travels at 3000mph (Mach 5). If our ships are 1000km away, it will take 12-minutes for the missile to hit our Supercarriers. Our supercarriers travel at 35mph. They'll be 7-miles (11km) away from the site, which is far beyond the nuclear blast. Carriers can turn on a dime, and our technology would absolutely detect a missile-launch of that speed and guess where its going, so the carrier will be able to "dodge" out of the way.
The only way that DF-21 hits our carriers, be it with a nuke or conventional, is if it has homing capabilities. It needs to be able to detect the ship while flying at 3000mph and "home" into the target.
Missiles aren't laser beams. They take time, even when traveling at hypersonic speeds, to hit their target. 12 minutes is more than enough time for a 35mph vessel to "dodge a nuke".
------
Nukes or no nukes, everything relies upon the homing capabilities of the hypothetical, untested weapon China has developed. Only China will know how reliable that thing is, its probably one of the secrets they won't tell anybody.
EDIT: And that assumes that China can find our carriers. If war starts, I'm pretty sure we'd destroy their satellites, on the chance that their missiles do have homing capabilities. (How do the missiles home? The missile itself probably doesn't have a radar system to find ships, they probably rely upon some other satellite to find our ships and report to the missile where to go. Destroy that satellite, and we're good. Etc. etc. This is "Space Force" stuff but... you can see why USA funded the Space Force to have generals think about this kind of tactic)
------
EDIT2: So now what? Lets say China decides to nuclear-first strike vs our Carriers. And then suddenly they miss. What do you think happens after that? USA's gloves come off and we hit them back with a retaliatory nuke, except we won't miss.Its a well known fact that Chinese single-party system is more corrupt than us. We may have a lot of corruption, but our enemy in this fight has even more corruption / self-dealing / hidden pockets.
I'm simply worried about evaluating the situation with the pieces on the board. Public information on the military situation is surprisingly easy to find, because the US debates its budget in public. If you read up on the budget requests and reports, a lot of what we know is public information.
All of this money / projects / etc. etc. has been endlessly debated in Congress, in public, with documents that you or I can pull up and debate here if you so wish. China does not have that luxury. We're smarter because of it. But just because we're smarter doesn't mean we're going to win this fight.
Case in point: the US/UN didn't exactly win in Korea, yet they didn't nuke anyone, even in the absence of MAD at the time.
The USA is one of the only countries to have nuked our own soldiers in a wargame to study the effects of nuclear weapons on military tactics. (EDIT: Right, Russia did Totskoye: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totskoye_nuclear_exercise)Do you know what a nuke does to a soldier's psyche? Well, of course not. But our generals do. That's part of our secrets and manuals. The pilots have retired / died from back then (old age and/or cancer), but their writing and stories live on. Helicopter pilots, airplane pilots, Navy, marines, and foot-soldiers all participated in the exercises. Learning to fly in nuclear-force winds, how to take shelter, how to advance despite the appearance of giant mushroom clouds.
China simply doesn't have that experience.
------
EDIT: Russia also has this nuclear experience. But that's why we can trust Russia to not use nukes, cause they know the destruction they will cause. I think I can agree with you that China might choose to use nukes, but I don't think that's a fight China would win.
Taiwan is plenty stable, its relationship with the PRC is not.
Nukes aren't some magic "win" button. They still have to travel and hit their target.
Carriers only pose a threat to fleets. China can just play defense. Let the US come close and swarm with (inferior) planes, conventional rockets and troops.
Of course it's not that simple, I was just listing some scenarios to put things in perspective.
All this talk about threats, nukes and invasions... Fortunately what keeps everybody sane and prevents all that is... trading.
I mean, maybe its true, but I wouldn't rely upon it. I'd be willing to increase trade on the chance that it prevents war. But call me a pessimist on that particular factoid.If China performed a nuclear first-strike against us, the 3750 nuclear warheads launched from a variety of sources (SLBMs in particular are incredibly scary: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine-launched_ballistic_missile).
What they don't tell you about ICBMs: they travel at Mach 23. Once launched, they are practically unstoppable. They're also not designed for precision, but instead just smacking the country randomly with the biggest bombs we got.
In any case, China doesn't want to use nukes, because we'd retaliate with our nukes. The expectation is that we'd keep things conventional... and ideally focused on Taiwan.
---------
I'd expect China to use conventional warheads on the DF-21. We all know they're nuclear capable, but hopefully our nuclear deterrent is big enough to prevent them from thinking about using their nukes.
A missile of that type doesn't need to be precise in the way that you're thinking, so its not like dodging it would be an option. Also, you can bet that a couple of these missiles would be launched in unison with enough additional missiles armed with conventional warheads to saturate any countermeasures in order to make it successfully reach near enough to its target. Once it gets close enough and goes off, there goes most of the naval task force.
1. Do not underestimate the complexity of a homing missile at Mach5+ (Hypersonic) speeds. Its hard enough to move that fast, its even harder to steer at those speeds without blowing yourself up. And its even harder for you to communicate with such a missile to provide it with a moving coordinate / homing.
2. What magic sensor network do you have to provide the "lock-on" capabilities? And can it really see further than an E-2 Hawkeye (the "eye-in-the-sky" airplane that would be supporting the Aircraft Carrier) + the supporting AEGIS cruiser ?? If all the enemy sensors are dead, then the Aircraft Carrier cannot be locked on. Its really that simple. Kill the satellites, kill the drones, and the missiles cannot "home". If it cannot home, the Aircraft Carrier can dodge a nuke.
3. Some sensors could be on board the DF-21 directly. But the DF-21 is traveling at Mach5+ speeds and has very little time to calculate its trajectory... and those sensors will be up against Mach5 hypersonic winds (ie: good luck getting most typical sensors to even function in those conditions). Furthermore, the Destroyers that accompany the Supercarrier group are provisioned with anti-missile flares. Meaning the missile won't see 1 carrier in its radar signature, it will see 10 carriers, all in different directions... 9 of them harmless flares: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nulka
As such, 35mph is more than enough to dodge a nuke, as long as the enemy sensor network is down (Or alternatively, if China's homing capabilities are just a bluff and currently don't work as expected)So you're saying that China not only wishes to invoke US-MAD policies with a singular nuclear launch... but instead wishes death upon themselves by launching multiple nuclear missiles at US sailors?
Really think about the risks involved in that. Even one nuke would be a huge escalation from the status quo. If you're saying that China is launching 5 or 6 nukes to ensure a carrier kill, then US nuclear weaponry would be obviously aimed in on China for a retaliatory strike. Even then, I'm still not sure if those missiles will hit a Carrier, or if they'd hit a flare, or if the sensor network would go down before the "lock on". Its very much uncertain.
Worst case: China will have spent like 5 nukes to kill one carrier. Our remaining 10 carriers would send out E2 Hawkeyes to find targets, and then our nuclear submarines will launch our retaliatory nuclear missiles.
Either way...It certainly isn't 'Capitalist Market Forces'.
That's how we built so many tanks, for Russia, Britain, and ourselves. Wholesale takeover of private company factories.
It is for emergencies, but every factory in the country is innately a potential war factory and key to our defense strategy.
This has been enshrined into the law through the Defense Production Act, and has been involved to speed up vaccine distribution and mask production last year.
We actually ran out of vaccine needles and masks if you don't remember. Defense production act helped.
--------
Today's war machines need chips. The F35 is so unstable only a computer can fly it. Building a defense base for advanced chip production within the country is necessary.
TSMC in Arizona is one piece of that strategy. Intel also wants that money though.
I'm mostly neutral to the idea of Intel getting money. Frankly, GloFo should be pushed instead, as that's the US-home grown fab facility. Sure, they're stuck at 12nm, but some government $$$ would allow them to reach 7nm and 5nm, and 3nm.
Intel almost only makes Intel / Altera chips. I know they technically have other customers but... they're not really comparable to TSMC or GloFo.
I think I overall agree on making sure that the USA has a strategic, domestic, source of chips. Not only for war, but also for economic reasons. Even if no war were to take place, its clear that chips are the way of the future.
There would have been no referendum without the invasion. The post invasion independent surveys, along with history, tell the true story.
Not that it does not happen, cause it does... (where is that fiber to the home we paid you for, ISPs?)