William Huo Profile picture
May 31 12 tweets 2 min read Read on X
"Johnny can’t read. Mary can’t do math. And you wonder why America never built its own chip industry?"

asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Huaw…
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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More from @wmhuo168

Jun 4
Bloomberg accidentally wrote a satire on U.S. trade policy.
They call it “crossed wires.” What it really is: China finally using leverage after years of being the West’s mineral mule. Let’s dismantle the fiction. 👇

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Bloomberg's latest rare earths piece is neoliberal agitprop at its finest. They lament “crossed wires” between Trump and Xi, while completely missing the point: China isn't escalating. It’s retaliating against a trade war it didn’t start. (1/12)
The US slaps 145% tariffs, launches an embargo, and then gets upset when China halts gallium and germanium exports. Bloomberg frames this as “concerning” and “escalatory” by Beijing. The irony is radioactive. (2/12)
Read 13 tweets
Jun 4
Mark Zuckerberg isn’t building the future. He’s trying to escape it. What he just said about holograms is pure dystopian lunacy. You need to read this.

barchart.com/story/news/326…
Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t need another product launch. He needs a therapist. Possibly a full clinical team. Because his idea of the future looks less like innovation and more like a billionaire’s nervous breakdown dressed up in VR goggles. (1/11)
Meta’s new gospel? You don’t need physical objects, human partners, or actual relationships. Just AI-generated holograms. Infinite lovers, coworkers, pets, whatever. Fully synthetic. Fully obedient. Fully monetizable. (2/11)
Read 12 tweets
Jun 4
Apple’s dirty secret? It doesn’t make anything. And the guy who does is playing both sides of a Cold War. Here’s what Bloomberg won’t tell you. 👇

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
Bloomberg's latest fluff piece says Apple “can’t leave China,” blaming tariffs and supply chain complexity. But they conveniently ignore the most critical fact: Apple doesn’t manufacture a single thing. It’s a glorified design and marketing company. (1/12)
All of Apple’s manufacturing is outsourced, chiefly to Foxconn, run by Taiwanese billionaire Terry Gou. That’s not a footnote. That’s the entire geopolitical story Bloomberg won’t touch. (2/12)
Read 13 tweets
Jun 4
America picked a trade war. China picked up its gold and walked away. Now the bill is due.

marketwatch.com/story/how-japa…
THREAD: Trump started the divorce from China in 2018. Now in 2025, it’s final. America’s banker has walked away with the vault keys. (1/13)
Trump's 2018 trade war wasn’t about tariffs. It was the first open signal that the U.S. saw China not as a trading partner, but as a threat to contain. Beijing got the message. (2/13)
Read 14 tweets
Jun 3
Japan tried to buy America’s soul and got slapped with a tariff.
The Nippon Steel deal wasn’t about steel. It was about revenge, trauma, and a delusional empire clinging to its rusted past.

washingtonpost.com/world/2025/06/…
Why would Nippon Steel want to acquire US Steel?

You don’t need an economist. You need a Freudian analyst with a geopolitical lens and a copy of The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. Here's a thread on Japan Inc's industrial trauma clashing with America's rust-belt delusions. (1/14)
This was never just a steel acquisition. It was an act of symbolic exorcism. Nippon Steel, the institutional heir of Japan’s postwar rise, wanted to reclaim pride by buying the industrial corpse of American greatness. (2/14)
Read 15 tweets
Jun 3
Huawei cracked the EDA code under full sanctions. But now FT wants you to believe Xiaomi is helpless? The narrative is collapsing faster than U.S. leverage. 🧵

ft.com/content/2b0a00…
FT claims Xiaomi is "crippled" by US EDA sanctions. What they won’t tell you is this — Huawei already solved this problem. The only thing actually broken is the Anglo-American narrative machine. A rebuttal in 11 parts (1/11)
Huawei, under Entity List hellfire, taped out a 7nm SoC using Chinese EDA and SMIC’s DUV process. Xiaomi, with full access to TSMC and no sanctions, is supposedly in trouble? Spare us the geopolitical fan fiction (2/11)
Read 12 tweets

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