Link seemingly should be to gwern's comment? https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/oBTkthd7h8sDpkiu2/analysis-u...

> TSMC fabbing only the start (!), now all ASML customer support† is gone (!!) not just EUV machines, on top of which all the American-citizen employees (a nontrivial fraction due to education/birth abroad) have halted work literally overnight (!!!), and overall what sounds like the collapse of Chinese semiconductors amidst a Chinese economy already showing serious signs of distress and little capacity to keep an industry on life-support indefinitely as they scramble to survive -

It keeps going & going ... !!!!

I am not so doom & gloom, largely because I see China as literally the only nation in the world that has the willpower, top down comprehension/drive, and scale to sometimes buckle down & drive huge vast tasks that are necessary, and computing is obviously a top necessity. They have very nearby friends(-ish) facing very new sanctions who are having lots of problems having been cut off already, which is a very modern development & hugely emphasizes the criticalness. But they are not stupid and already understand this existential risk enormously. (And they understand that their political honor-spat for geo-control of nearby areas will probably not ever secure this asset- close though it may be- but only destabilize their access, necessitating internal development.)

It's a huge challenge for China: the challenges are huge, there's so few friends, there's tons of other economic peril afoot already. It's hard enough. And command economies have been incredibly bad for almost all human history. Yesterday's story on Phantom Forests had a ton of great commentary here-about[1]. @theptip's deserved top comment is so sharp & lovely here, about how hard it is to stay calibrated, to look at things honestly from the top:

> In summary, the state seeks to render its resources and populace legible, because local arrangements are very hard to quantify (and tax) from the center. This drive to achieve legibility inevitably distorts the world they are attempting to understand, for example by incentivizing monoculture forestry (easier to count the trees) instead of natural forest growth (providing many communal resources that are impossible to measure such as firewood, foraging, grazing, and so on).

Right now China is in for some shit. SMIC got to 7nm by accepting horrible yields on older UV, on machines they'd already bought (and now have a good number of). Just getting back to this as a capability they can keep doing is an enormous challenge.

It's insanely stupidly complex how Extreme lithography is, shooting lasers at tiny drops of falling tin, through huge ultra-exact light/lens assemblies. There's maybe better sources, but Asianometry had a decent coverage[3]. But wow, there have already been so many conferences, so many papers, covering so many of the details, so much of the work made known.

This is an immense challenge, requiring enormous talent & colossal resources. I dunno though. I expect China will be able to knowledge-share fairly effectively internally at the technical level, although reporting up is a challenge at all orgs & harder still for nations. I expect China to be able to keep funding, and when successes are happening, to capitalize & share these gains across the industry. Once China starts getting decent, they'll be able to roll out at a huge scale. China has a huge late-game strength, & they have the ability to recognize & make progress towards that late game state. For their sake, I hope they can steer through this & retain the will & can maintain their commitments to these projects.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33247892

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33251073

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ge2RcvDlgw