Double-ClickFabs being "complex" is certainly one way to put it when you're a pariah-state / ally to the greatest extestential threat Taiwan has.

Icon CharlieBecause of the conflict, there is a serious embargo on everything electronic and people making components as such. It is gotten to the point that Russian Military are tearing apart electronic components off from Western Made (first) appliances to get what they need.

www.techspot.com/news/94589-russian-tanks-using-chips-household-appliances-due-sanctions.html

www.forbes.com/sites/erictegler/2023/01/20/is-russia-really-buying-home-appliances-to-harvest-computer-chips-for-ukraine-bound-weapons-systems/?sh=318ea500588e

Regardless of my statement above, what is known that the embargo is putting the screws on the Russian Economy. And there are companies that will take advantage of that.

Why_MeI'm trying to come up with a list of countries that don't trade with China.

DenverSanctions don't have the desired effect if they can buy almost any western product from China or India.

caroline!Disregarding the flame-bait comments there's two big things that are wrong here, one is companies still importing western products and the other relying on ROC foundries, at one point the pressure put on them by the US will be too high and they'll have to stop manufacturing these chips "or else" they'll lose contracts with western corporations, the choice is a no-brainer for them as those contracts mean trillions of dollars for them. And importing via India/PRC will become too costly to make sense at one point, $2000 for an i3 kind of costly, or an "Ultra 3" in the new naming scheme ^^

The Soviet solution to the problem would be "make things without chips", and it might work though the alternatives would be much more primitive compared to a similar western product. I have one example and it involves fluorescent lights, I won't explain how those work but there's a component inside called ballast which is basically a big coil of thin wire, well, at one point the design was rendered obsolete in western countries and was replaced with a transistor alternative which nowadays is a small plastic box with a bunch of electronics inside, but there was (or is) a factory in Russia that still made them, you compare one made in the 1980s and other from 2020 and they're exactly the same inside, the same happened to tubes, like, who actively manufactures classic tubes in western countries? nobody or almost nobody as they've all gone the LED is better route and get LEDs from China put them inside a plastic tube and call it a day, well, Russia still makes tubes, they're not sold under western brands anymore though, I have a bunch of Osram from 2020 but those are probably the last as Osram itself isn't offering them anymore in any country.

They have tech though not to manufacture "stuff that needs chips", in a nutshell. What do lamps have in common with smartphones and computers? you can manufacture them but they won't be as good as that of the competition, they'll work though, to an extent. If you convince people they don't *need* an smartphone then even better, your StarTAC clone factory will be overwhelmed by demand in a month. Imagine if CRT monitors and valves make a comeback, I'm pretty sure the Russians haven't trashed all the infrastructure required to manufacture them, there's plenty of glass too. The 80's live on.

evernessinceIt's not feasible for everyone to switch back to using old technology given the enormous power draw jump that would bring and that many modern services simply cannot run on older tech. It might not be so hard for people to drop cell phones from their lives but critical businesses like hospitals would loose 90% of their machines. Everything from product design, manufacturing efficiency, infrastructure design, pretty much everything would be negatively impacted. Obviously they'd completely miss the upcoming AI boom as well, which is set to provide more increases in efficiency and access to more advance technology and medicines.