How Silicon Chips Rule the World

 

"Maintaining the flow of oil is still crucial for the world economy. But now the supply of semiconductors is also critical for commerce, and war and peace.

When I first arrived in Taiwan as a college student in the summer of 1973, there was no ambiguity whatsoever about the American role on the island.

Over the previous two years, President Richard M. Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, had opened relations with the People’s Republic of China in Beijing. But a short distance away in Taiwan, which the People’s Republic considers a breakaway province, U.S. Air Force jets soared overhead. There was a U.S. base right in Taipei, within walking distance of my favorite bookstore.

After reading Chinese philosophy, I’d drop by the base canteen for a fix of cheeseburgers, Coca-Cola and rock ’n’ roll. At night, the local bars were often filled with hard-partying G.I.s, flown in from Vietnam for rest and recreation.

As an American in Taipei, you understood in a visceral way that you were living in an outpost of the American empire in Asia, protected by the American military.

Now, while Taiwan remains a close ally, it is also protected by something far more subtle — its absolutely central role in world markets.

The ‘silicon shield’

More specifically, Taiwan is a colossus in the global market for semiconductors, the brains of modern electronics. Taiwan takes some comfort in what its president, Tsai Ing-wen, calls its “silicon shield” — its mastery of the manufacturing of the microchips that are as essential to the economy in the 21st century as oil was 100 years ago.

Taiwan produces most of the world’s highest-tech silicon chips — slivers the size of a fingernail, on which are embedded billions of microscopic transistors. The very best chips are made — “fabricated” is the term of art — at the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC, which may be the most important company that most people in the United States have never heard of.

Taiwan Semiconductor is the most valuable company in Asia and one of the dozen most valuable in the world, with a market capitalization of more than $400 billion. If you invest in international stocks through a broad, diversified mutual fund or exchange-traded fund, you probably own a piece of it. I do, through several Vanguard index funds in my retirement accounts.

It has been a splendid investment. Over the 20 years through Wednesday, Taiwan Semiconductor returned 18.6 percent annually, including dividends, FactSet data shows. That thrashed the S&P 500, with an annual return of 10.3 percent, and Intel, the biggest American chip-maker, at 6.7 percent.

The magic of those chips

Taiwan Semiconductor isn’t a household name because it doesn’t sell its products directly to consumers. But its own customers certainly do. For a clue about the company’s commercial power, consider that the microchips it makes for Apple are the core of every iPhone sold.

The iPhone 13 mini in my pocket, as well as the new iPhone 14 models introduced on Wednesday, is built around chips that were designed by Apple in California; produced by Taiwan Semiconductor in Hsinchu, Taiwan; and shipped for assembly on mainland China or perhaps, these days, in another country.

China has made the production of its own state-of-the-art silicon chips a national priority, but it has been unable to catch up with Taiwan. The Biden administration is intent on making sure that it does not, imposing restrictions on the export of the most advanced chips — and chip-making equipment — to China. And with $50 billion from the new CHIPS and Science Act, the administration is trying to shift some of the fabrication of the best chips back to American shores.

As my colleague David Leonhardt put it: “The most advanced category of mass-produced semiconductors — used in smartphones, military technology and much more — is known as 5 nm. A single company in Taiwan, known as TSMC, makes about 90 percent of them. U.S. factories make none.”

The structures etched on these microchips are vanishingly small. “Nm” is short for nanometer. Read this slowly: A nanometer is a millionth of a millimeter.

Chris Miller, a professor of international history at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, describes the microchips coming out of Taiwan eloquently in his forthcoming book, “Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology.” He points out that the coronavirus that began spreading around the planet in 2020 was only about 100 nanometers in diameter. The same year, Taiwan Semiconductor was etching shapes less than half that size onto scores of millions of chips for Apple.

Back in the 20th century, I listened to ballgames on a transistor radio. Now, I watch them on my phone and iPad, thanks, in part, to the Apple A15 processor inside them, which contains 16 billion transistors, all etched in Taiwan.

What’s more, modern weapons systems of all descriptions and the world’s telecommunications infrastructure, plus applications in artificial intelligence, self-driving vehicles and much more, depend on these exceedingly complex chips.

As Dale C. Copeland, a professor of international relations at the University of Virginia, writes in Foreign Affairs: “China now has some capability to produce chips with transistors that are under 15 and even under 10 nanometers in size. But to stay on the cutting edge of technological developments,” China needs chips “measuring under seven or under five nanometers, which only Taiwan can mass-produce at a high level of quality.”

How long that tech gap can be sustained may be as important a geopolitical question as the nuclear, ballistic and antiballistic puzzles of the Cold War.

The origins of Taiwan’s success story are difficult to explain in a nutshell, but I’ll try.

The Taiwan government wanted to develop a local Silicon Valley in the 1980s, and had cheap land, ready capital and a highly educated work force eager to work at much lower wages than companies in the United States paid.

But it didn’t have the expertise until it brought in Morris Chang, a Chinese-born U.S. tech veteran, who realized that manufacturing chips, not designing them, would be Taiwan’s forte. Mr. Chang founded Taiwan Semiconductor, and the rest is history.

Stock prices and the Pelosi visit

In a long Zoom conversation, Professor Copeland said a nation’s military power had always been built on its economic strength.

“Cutting countries off from access to critical materials can cause a war,” he said, “but calibrating access carefully might be able to prevent one.”

In this sense, limiting trade in the most advanced semiconductors is, at a bare minimum, provocative to China, which dearly needs them. But permitting trade in “fairly advanced” semiconductors softens the blow and can promote prosperity, Professor Copeland said. That is essentially what the Biden administration is doing.

What is most important is “a country’s expectations of future trade,” Professor Copeland said. If it is clear that China will be better off with a steady flow of chips from Taiwan, he added, peace is likely to prevail.

Taiwan is “the beating heart” of the global semiconductor industry, Professor Miller says. But China’s military exercises, in response to the Taiwan visit of Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, illustrate how vulnerable the global economy has become.

Were Taiwan’s semiconductor operations to be destroyed, Professor Miller estimated, the total worldwide economic damage could easily exceed the cost of the entire coronavirus pandemic.

“If you start looking at the role Taiwan plays in just about every industry, which is tremendous and which everyone relies on, you have to ask, ‘What could we produce without it if it were gone?’

“In Year 1, we would face tremendous disruptions across all sectors of the economy. It would take years to recover and to replace that capacity, if it were destroyed.”

That’s why I have been monitoring the share price of Taiwan Semiconductor carefully. From Aug. 2, the date of Ms. Pelosi’s arrival in Taiwan, through Thursday, the stock fell more than 5 percent. That’s not great, but it isn’t a sign of the apocalypse.

The stock market seems unperturbed, but the situation is dicey.

Central problems in the U.S.-China relationship have never been resolved. Back in the Shanghai Communiqué of February 1972, which reopened diplomatic relations, the two sides agreed that there is only “one China.” Chinese leaders made it clear that “the Taiwan question is the crucial question obstructing the normalization of relations between China and the United States,” and, 50 years later, it remains an enormous problem.

China would prefer to achieve reunification peacefully but won’t rule out a military solution, if it comes to that. The United States remains committed to protecting Taiwan, but it cannot prevent China from degrading or destroying the semiconductor manufacturing capabilities of the island.

The Taiwan semiconductor industry’s extraordinary importance in world commerce may be the only thing capable of providing that protection.

Ideology and nationalistic fervor have led to war in the past, and Chinese leaders say the Taiwan question can’t be put off indefinitely.

At the moment, though, just about everyone else is depending on the power of the silicon shield."

Kai gyvenimas dovanoja obuolius, pasigaminkite kietojo sidro

  "Aistringam namų aludariui, kaip aš, žemesnė temperatūra reiškia stoutus, porterius ir, tikrąją sezono žvaigždę, kietąjį obuolių sidrą. Man seilė kyla, galvojant apie kiekvieną pastoracinio proceso dalį: obuolių rinkimą su draugais, spaudimą į "minkštą" sidrą, sukaupus valią, kad visa tai sutraiškyti vienu ypu. Laimei, reikia nedaug pastangų, kad tas sultis paverstumėte kažkuo tokiu pat rafinuotu, kokį galite nusipirkti vietinėje alkoholinių gėrimų parduotuvėje.

 

    Tai prasideda nuo obuolio. Visiems laimingiems žmonėms, kurių kieme ar kaimynystėje auga obelis, tai yra lengva dalis. (Aš pasikliauju savo bažnyčios medžiais.) Jei to nepadarysite, eikite į komercinį sodą.

 

    Kevinas Stahras, namų alaus gaminimo prekių parduotuvės „Mainbrew“, esančios Hillsboro, Ore, savininkas, sako, kad kiekvienam sidro galonui, kurį tikitės pagaminti, jums reikės maždaug 20 svarų obuolių.

 

    Tada jums reikės būdo tuos vaisius susmulkinti. Tai reiškia kažkokį obuolių smulkintuvą, kuris susmulkina obuolius į minkštimą, ir presą, kuris iš to minkštimo išspaudžia sultis. Šiems tikslams skirta įranga gali būti brangi, bet efektyvi. Pvz., gražių rankų darbo Correll sidro presų kaina prasideda nuo 1300 dolerių (CorrellCiderPresses.com), jie yra daug efektyvesni už dažnai siūlomą būdą obuolius supilti į virtuvinį kombainą, o tada perkošti netvarkingą košę per marlę.

 

    Ponas Stahras sako, kad investuoti į brangų gaminį verta, jei turite savo obelis ir kiekvienais metais gaminate sidrą. Kitu atveju paprastai galite išsinuomoti. Kai kuriuose soduose už tam tikrą mokestį galite naudotis jų instrumentu. O naminio alaus parduotuvėse dažnai po ranka yra rinkinys. (Mainbrew nuomoja trupintuvą ir presą už 40 dolerių per dieną.)

 

    Bet jums nereikia spausti savo obuolių. Emmetas Leahy yra „Clawhammer Supply“ COO, esančiame Asheville, N.C., parduodančioje namų fermentavimo įrangą. Jis dažniausiai perka minkštą sidrą iš sodų, o paskui namuose gamina kietąjį sidrą. Tai, ką prarasite ("Instagram" momentas), jam mažai svarbu. Bet kuriuo atveju galutinis rezultatas yra puikus sidras. Daugelis namų fermentuotojų net perka minkštą sidrą iš bakalėjos parduotuvės ir vis tiek tvirtina, kad jų galutiniai produktai yra skanūs. Vienintelis laimikis: patikrinkite, ar etiketėje nėra konservantų, tokių, kaip kalio sulfatas arba natrio benzoatas, kurie abu gali sunaikinti fermentacijai reikalingas mieles. Tačiau jūs gaunate sulčių, todėl jas lengva padaryti alkoholinėmis. „Puikus sidro dalykas yra tai, kad jūs iš tikrųjų darote jį, naudodami tik mieles“, – sakė ponas Leahy.

 

    Kokios mielės? Nuomonių gausu, tačiau ponas Stahras ir ponas Leahy teigia, kad mielės, pagamintos specialiai sidrui, o ne šampanui, vynui, alui ar duonai, paprastai geriau išsaugo obuolių skonį.

 

    „White Labs“, San Diege įsikūrusi įmonė, siūlo skystų sidro mielių paketą, idealiai tinkantį penkių galonų partijoms; Naujojoje Zelandijoje įsikūrusi bendrovė „Mangrove Jack“ parduoda sausas mieles, kurias lengviau padalyti į mažesnes partijas. Jūsų vietinėje alaus parduotuvėje gali būti šių ar panašių mielių; jei ne, patikrinkite internete.

 

    Kad ir kokias mieles naudotumėte, laikas įmaišyti jų į minkštą sidrą. Mielės sunaudos jūsų minkštame sidre esantį cukrų ir pavers jį alkoholiu ir dujomis. Šis žingsnis gali būti bauginantis, tačiau tinkami įrankiai nepalieka vietos klaidoms. Tokius įrankius galite nusipirkti a la carte, tačiau daug lengviau tiesiog įsigyti alaus ruošimo rinkinį, kuriame yra viskas. „Northern Brewer“ kietojo sidro gaminimo rinkinyje (66 doleriai, NorthernBrewer.com) yra didelis maistinis kibiras su dangčiu, kuriame telpa iki 6,5 galonų fermentuojančio sidro.

 

    Kibiras taip pat turi kaištį oro užraktui (taip pat įtraukta), kuris leidžia dujoms išeiti, jų atgal neįleidžiant.

 

    „Mainbrew“ taip pat parduoda pradinį sidro gaminimo rinkinį (126 dolerių, Mainbrew.com), kuriame yra didesnis kibiras, keletas papildomų matavimo įrankių ir 1983 m. Annie Proulx klasikinis „Geriausio obuolių sidro gaminimas“.

 

    Norėsite palikti sidrą kibire – nuo ​​šiol žinote jums ir visiems, kuriems gali kilti klausimas, kodėl jūsų vonios kampe yra kibiras, kaip jūsų „fermentatorių“ – bent porai savaičių su kontroliuojama temperatūra. Kuo ilgiau jis fermentuosis, tuo jūsų sidras bus sausesnis.

 

    Po to turėsite atskirti skystį nuo mielių sluoksnio, kuris nukrito į jūsų fermentatoriaus dugną. Jūsų rinkinyje turi būti sifonas, leidžiantis nukreipti fermentuotą sidrą į butelius arba statinę.

 

    Kadangi statinės yra brangios, dauguma aludarių pasirenka sidrą laikyti buteliuose. Turėsite pateikti savo (pradėkite saugoti juos dabar), tačiau daugumoje rinkinių yra tam tikras sprendimas, kurį turėtumėte naudoti juos valydami.

 

    Kai sidras bus buteliuose, įpilkite šiek tiek kukurūzų cukraus (4 doleriai, NorthernBrewer.com), kad įsitikintumėte, jog galutinis rezultatas yra tinkamai gazuotas. Tada naudokite butelio kamštelį (yra įtrauktas į Northern Brewer ir Mainbrew rinkinį), kad užsandarintumėte butelius. Po kelių savaičių šaldytuve atidarykite vieną ir mėgaukitės savo darbo vaisiais.

 

    Yra daug būdų, kaip pritaikyti procesą pagal savo pageidavimus. Galite pabandyti naudoti įvairių rūšių obuolius, įvairių rūšių mieles ir ilgesnę fermentaciją. Ir nebijokite žaisti su kitais ingredientais. Praėjusiais metais J. Leahy į sidrą įdėjo apynių, dažniausiai skirtų alui. „Tai buvo nuostabus skonis“, – sakė jis.

 

     Arba, jei norite kuo rudeniškiausios patirties, galite pamėginti sidrą pagardinti moliūgų prieskoniais. Tikrai nesistengčiau jus sustabdyti. Tai yra geriausia naminio alaus gaminimo dalis: galite daryti, ką norite." [1]

1. OFF DUTY --- Gear & Gadgets: The Fall Issue: When Life Gives You Apples, Make Hard Cider --- With just a little equipment, you'll find it's a lot easier than you think
Pot, Justin. 
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 10 Sep 2022: D.10.

When Life Gives You Apples, Make Hard Cider

"To an avid home-brewer like me, colder temperatures mean stouts, porters and, the true star of the season, hard apple cider. I salivate thinking about each part of the pastoral process: picking apples with pals, pressing them into "soft" cider, mustering up the will to not chug it all in one go. Mercifully, it takes little effort to turn that juice into something as refined as anything you could buy at your local liquor store.

It starts with the apple. For any lucky people with an apple tree in their yard or neighborhood, this is the easy part. (I rely on the trees at my church.) Failing that, go to an orchard.

Kevin Stahr, owner of Mainbrew, a home brewing supply shop in Hillsboro, Ore., says you'll need around 20 pounds of apples for each gallon of cider you hope to make.

Next, you'll need a way to pulverize those fruits. That means some sort of apple crusher, which grinds apples into a pulp, and a press, which squeezes the juice from that pulp. Equipment specific to these purposes can be expensive, but effective. While the handsome, handcrafted Correll Cider Presses, for example, start at $1,300 (CorrellCiderPresses.com), they're far more efficient than the oft-suggested hack of dumping apples into a food processor, then straining the messy mash through a mesh bag.

Mr. Stahr says investing in a pricey contraption is worth it if you have your own apple trees and make cider each year. Otherwise, you can usually rent one. Some orchards let you use theirs on site for a fee. And home-brew shops often have a set on hand. (Mainbrew rents out a crusher and press for $40 a day.)

But you needn't press your own apples. Emmet Leahy is COO of Clawhammer Supply in Asheville, N.C., which sells equipment for home-brewing. He usually buys soft cider from orchards, then makes it into hard cider at home. What you lose (an Instagrammable moment) matters little to him. Either way, the end result is great cider. Plenty of home-brewers even buy their soft cider from (gasp) the grocery store, and still insist their end products are delicious. The only catch: Check the label for preservatives like potassium sulfate or sodium benzoate, both of which can kill the yeast required for fermentation. However you get juice, making it alcoholic is easy. "The nice thing about cider is all you're really doing is throwing yeast on it," said Mr. Leahy.

What kind of yeast? Opinions abound, but Mr. Stahr and Mr. Leahy say yeasts made specifically for cider, rather than champagne, wine, beer or bread, generally preserve apple flavors better.

White Labs, a San Diego-based company, offers a liquid cider yeast packet ideal for five-gallon batches; Mangrove Jack, a New Zealand-based company, sells a dry yeast that's easier to split between smaller batches. Your local brewing store might carry these or similar yeasts; if not, check online.

Whatever yeast you use, it's time to add it to your soft cider. The yeasts will consume the sugar in your soft cider and turn it into alcohol and gas. This step can be intimidating, but the right tools leave little room for error. You can buy such tools a la carte, but it is much easier to just get a brewing kit that has it all. The Northern Brewer Hard Cider Making Kit ($66, NorthernBrewer.com) includes a large lidded, food-grade bucket that can hold up to 6.5 gallons of fermenting cider.

The bucket also has a spigot for an airlock (also included) that lets gas escape without letting any in.

Mainbrew also sells a Cidermaking Starter Kit ($126, Mainbrew.com) that comes with a bigger bucket, some additional measuring tools and Annie Proulx's 1983 classic "Making the Best Apple Cider."

You'll want to leave your cider in the bucket -- henceforth known to you, and anyone who might wonder why there's a bucket in the corner of your bathroom, as your "fermenter" -- for at least a couple of weeks in any temperature-controlled room. The longer it ferments, the drier your cider will be.

After that, you'll need to separate the liquid from the layer of yeast that's dropped to the bottom of your fermenter. Your kit should contain a siphon that allows you to direct your fermented cider into bottles or a keg.

Since kegs are expensive, most brewers opt to store cider in bottles. You'll need to provide your own (start saving your empties now), but most kits come with some sort of solution that you should use to clean them.

Once your cider is in the bottles, add a bit of corn sugar ($4, NorthernBrewer.com) to make sure your end result is appropriately carbonated. Then, use a bottle capper (included in both the Northern Brewer and Mainbrew kit) to seal your bottles. After a few weeks in the fridge, crack one open and savor the fruits of your labor.

There are many ways to tailor the process to your preference. You can try using different kinds of apples, different strains of yeasts and longer fermentation times. And don't be afraid to play around with other ingredients. Last year, Mr. Leahy added hops, usually reserved for beer, to a cider. "It tasted amazing," he said.

Or, if you wanted the most autumn experience imaginable, you could try flavoring your cider with pumpkin spices. I certainly wouldn't try to stop you. That's the best part of home-brewing: You can do whatever you want." [1]

1. OFF DUTY --- Gear & Gadgets: The Fall Issue: When Life Gives You Apples, Make Hard Cider --- With just a little equipment, you'll find it's a lot easier than you think
Pot, Justin. 
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 10 Sep 2022: D.10.