News Huawei Builds Secret Fab Network to Avoid U.S. Sanctions

Status
Not open for further replies.
This article points to one glaring flaw in today's economy. So many products now, for questionable reasons, rely on computers for their operation that one country can essentially control the world. Look at what happened during the COVID shut downs.
 
The main concerns I have about this are:
  1. China could run older fabs out of business by operating at artificially low prices (i.e. "dumping").
  2. China could sew up the supply chain of critical input materials for fabs.

#1 can be partially addressed through tariffs, but unless they're rather expansive, you still have the problem of devices containing chips made on their cut-price nodes gaining a price advantage over devices which don't.

#2 requires some foresight and securing long-term supply contracts from where these resources mostly originate. Of course, a lot of the raw materials originate from relatively unstable countries, and if a regime is overthrown, then the new one might not honor contracts from before, preferring to renegotiate better terms or with customers they deem more favorable to their interests.

The long-term goal should simply be to have fair competition and a level playing field.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.