I have a feeling many of the recently announced American mega projects (like that OpenAI one for $500 billion) will soon also announce significant delays. Or we’ll just never hear about them again.
Thoughts on why?
With respect to the OpenAI $500 billion investment announcement, I will speculate it was mostly for show and they don’t actually have $500 billion to spend on GPUs, data centres and power plants.
Trump budget cuts. A lot of these programs to get America back on its feet are relying on federal money and support
I know many Americans want to have more chip building, but world trade would be better off if that were distributed
But it’s not distributed right now? Pretty much all of it happens in Taiwan, which China is poised to annex? That’s why it’s a security threat and why the CHIPS Act came to be
But if all that growth happened it’s still concentrated in one, politically unstable, country which has authoritarian approaches to trade. It does not improve the situation
No it wouldn’t? It’s not like Taiwan (or elsewhere) would stop making chips. And historically, the US’s trade practices are pretty good—better than terrible loan terms and indentured debt (e.g. China). I’m done with this whataboutism and claims of US authoritarianism. The US is why the world is as free and democratic as it is today. Just because we’ve had several miserable elections in the last few decades does not undo hundreds of years of global effects. And the threat of Chinese control of computer chips is very real. I like China for many reasons, but I also acknowledge that they are authoritatian capitalists with state (military) control that view the US as an economic, social, and political rival.
All I’m saying is better for most people if chip production was distributed across many countries and not the plaything, soft power, or negotiation chip ( pun intended) of any specific nationality or political grouping.
I know that probably is not possible but I can dream, and one country trying to get a monopoly gets in the way.
And historic trade practices is so yesterday
Greed, propaganda, and lack of law enforcement.
