Why the U.S. Never Aimed to Own the Full Semiconductor Ecosystem
It’s not just that it didn’t try. It couldn’t. Let’s break it down. (1/11)
Johnny and Mary Can’t Read
Literally. America’s public education system collapsed so long ago that most kids can’t do algebra, let alone quantum mechanics. STEM PhD? Be serious. (2/11)
The U.S. Outsourced Its Brainpower
Why build local talent when you can import it? The U.S. tech elite ran on Chinese, Indian, and Iranian PhDs. Johnny and Mary were too busy vlogging or vaping. (3/11)
Walmart Nation Doesn’t Build Cleanrooms
Manufacturing was offshored to Taiwan and Korea. Real work was for foreigners. Americans built apps, not fabs. The only silicon they touched was in a Valley VC's yacht kitchen. (4/11)
The U.S. Industrial Base Was Replaced by Raytheon
The Pentagon gets trillions. Intel gets ghost fabs. Semiconductor policy? That’s what you squeeze in between forever wars. (5/11)
China Builds Infrastructure. The U.S. Builds Narratives
China treats semiconductors like civilization. The U.S. treats them like venture bets. One has five-year plans. The other has quarterly earnings reports. (6/11)
America Has No Institutional Backbone
China has CAS, CETC, and a deep national bench. The U.S. has DARPA grants and think tanks who confuse PowerPoints for production. (7/11)
America Turned on Its Talent Pipeline
Just when it needed more engineers, the U.S. chased them away with FBI witch hunts, visa bans, and racial paranoia. Self-harm as foreign policy. (8/11)
No Tools, No Patience, No Sovereignty
The U.S. never tried to build ASML or Tokyo Electron. It was cheaper to import—and now it’s too late. Silicon sovereignty isn’t bought. It’s built. (9/11)
The Empire Polices Supply Chains. It Doesn’t Build Them
China builds fabs, materials, and tools. The U.S. files lawsuits, patents, and sanctions. One builds ecosystems. The other enforces monopolies. (10/11)
Taiwan Was the Colony. Now It’s the Crisis
The U.S. never planned for self-reliance. Taiwan would always fab the chips. Now, with war on the table, they're realizing Johnny and Mary still can't operate an EUV scanner. (11/11)
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China isn’t turning to RISC-V because it hates British tech. It’s doing it to get rid of Masayoshi Son. The story behind Arm’s collapse in China is uglier than you think.
Arm isn’t being rejected in China because it's British. It’s being sidelined because Masayoshi Son, the head of SoftBank, burned every bridge in Beijing. (1/9)
Son tried to sell Arm to Nvidia, a U.S. company tied to national security. That alone made Chinese officials nervous. But it got worse. (2/9)
China just built a fully working chip without silicon, without EUV, and with transistors only a few atoms thick.
[News] ASML’s High-NA EUV May Play a Smaller Role in Future Chipmaking, Intel Director Reportedly Claims | TrendForce News share.google/OOlAaqF4cchCtH…
China just built a fully functional RISC-V chip with no silicon and no EUV. The transistors are only a few atoms thick. And the architecture? Gate-All-Around, something China invented nearly 20 years ago. (1/15)
This chip is called WUJI, built at Fudan University. It uses molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂) as the channel material. No silicon. No TSMC. No ASML. (2/15)
China didn't wait for the market to kill hard drives. It executed them. Here's how NAND flash took over everything from laptops to datacenters while the West kept clinging to spinners.
HDDs are dead in China—everywhere that matters.
This wasn’t just market drift. It was deliberate policy, executed with precision. A short thread on how and why NAND killed the hard drive in China:
(1/9)
Forget what’s happening in the West. In China, spinning disks are already legacy. Laptops, desktops, tablets, and even entry-tier machines are now SSD by default. No debate. No nostalgia. Just purge.
The media is hyping the April Treasury surplus like it's proof the U.S. is back on track. In reality, it's a mirage. A temporary boost built on long-term liabilities. Here's what's really going on. share.google/qywHV8JfyQLRck…
April saw a $258B surplus. The second biggest monthly surplus in U.S. history. Sounds great until you realize it's just tax season plus headcount inflation from the open border. (1/10)
Social insurance revenues jumped. Not because of productivity. Because there are more workers. Most of them earning low wages and filing W-2s after crossing the border or getting legal status. (2/10)
The solution to America’s decline isn’t fixing DEI. It’s turning the clock back to 1980 and stopping Milton Friedman’s neoliberal coup before it captured every major institution. A thread 🧵
In 1980, the average CEO made 40–50x what a worker earned. By 2020, that ratio exploded past 350x. What changed? Friedman’s idea that the only purpose of a corporation is to maximize shareholder profit. (1/14)
That doctrine gutted America’s industrial base. It handed the steering wheel to financial capital. Stock buybacks, mass layoffs, and offshoring weren’t side effects. They were the business model. (2/14)