Korea will build the world's biggest semiconductor cluster in Gyeonggi Province by 2047 as Samsung Electronics, SK hynix and other chip companies plan to invest a total of 622 trillion won ($471 billion) to build 16 new fabs, creating more than 3 million jobs, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, Monday.
When deciding if something related to making chips makes sense, I think you also need to consider geopolitical risk. From what I understand, a pretty large chunk of the world’s semiconductor manufacturing is in Taiwan, and there’s a significant chance it will all be taken over by China at some point. Meanwhile relations between China and the West are steadily deteriorating, and semiconductors are constantly becoming more essential to the world economy.
As an analogy, imagine a scenario where most of the world’s petroleum production was controlled by the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. It’s something a lot of world governments would have a vested interest in avoiding.
Yes Intel has used that to get more funding from governments around the world for building their new factories, and they are building in Europe, USA and Israel.
TSMC is building factories outside Taiwan too for geopolitical reasons, and probably to secure the business in case of a Chinese invasion. Rumor has it that their Taiwan sites are rigged with explosives to make them worthless in case of a Chinese invasion.
Now Samsung adds a whopping 16 factories to the mix, but I bet Samsung wouldn’t do that to save the world, they do it to make money.