Activity

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“To close a deal, Samsung may need time to negotiate potential incentives with U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration. The company has hired people in Washington D.C. to lobby on behalf of the deal and is ready to go ahead with the new administration in place, the people said. Tax benefits and subsidies will ease Samsung’s financial burden, but the company may go ahead even without major incentives, one of the people said.”
>This sounds like Samsung is saying to “fedgov.inc” (as Dr. Joseph Farrell put it) “we are moving ahead with or without you.” I suspect that even if foreign entities see the USA as “not agreement capable” they are willing to go around the federal government and do business directly with the large American tech oligopolies that they perceive as able to do business. And perhaps if the foreign entities base their operational infrastructure in a more “agreement capable” state such as Texas then they are even more comfortable making these deals.

“Samsung has been looking into overseas chipmaking for years. Intensifying trade tensions between the U.S. and China and now Covid-19 are stoking uncertainty over the reliability and economics of the global supply chain. Plants in the U.S. could help the Korean chipmaker strike better deals with key clients in the U.S., particularly in competition with TSMC.”
>TSMC is the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, currently the largest and most advanced foundry. This part about uncertainty of the global supply chain with TSMC being explicitly mentioned makes me wonder if some of these global chess pieces are being moved in anticipation of a situation going hot in the South China Sea, which would certainly hamper TSMC’s operations.

“From Microsoft Corp. to Amazon.com Inc. and Google, the world’s largest cloud computing firms are increasingly designing their own silicon to power their vast data centers more efficiently. All need manufacturers like TSMC or Samsung to turn their blueprints into reality.”
>No software can run without hardware. The foundries are a lynchpin geostrategically.

“Samsung’s U.S. branch purchased land in October next to its existing Austin fab, which is capable of running older processes. The Austin City Council held a meeting in December to discuss Samsung’s request to rezone that parcel of land for industrial development, according to meeting minutes.”
>Here I am reminded of Dr. Joseph Farrell’s observation that Mr. Global might be moving pieces to Texas in order to bring his agenda there, as Austin is considered a quasi-Nuttyfornia island of wokeness in the otherwise rational state.

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“Intel in particular is likely to funnel more orders toward Samsung to offset any reliance on TSMC for its foundry needs, the brokerage said in a report.”
>Again, “offset any reliance on TSMC” makes me think there is anticipation of a possible China – Taiwan conflict.

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“Processors are more complex to manufacture than memory and their production yields are harder to control and scale up in the same way. Foundry customers also require bespoke solutions, imposing another barrier to rapid expansion and also making Samsung dependent on customers’ designs. But the Korean giant can draw confidence from its work with Nvidia, whose chief executive officer has sung Samsung’s praises in collaborating on the manufacturing for its latest graphics card silicon.”
>Interesting that the company explicitly mentioned as vouching for Samsung’s prowess is Nvidia. Nvidia makes graphics cards that are in high demand for crypto currency mining and all sorts of AI applications (neural network training, deep learning, and machine learning).