May 18, 2023 • 23 mins
Nearly all of the high-end microchips in the world - the ones we depend on for our phones and cars – are manufactured in an unassuming factory in Taiwan. Virginia Heffernan is one of the few reporters to go inside. She wrote about what she saw for Wired.
You can read Virginia Heffernan's story, "I Saw the Face of God in a Semiconductor Factory" here: https://www.wired.com/story/i-saw-the-face-of-god-in-a-tsmc-factory/
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
I'm Virginia Hiffernan, and I wrote I saw the Face
of God in a semiconductor factory for Wired, and it's
the story of the week.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
When I was thirteen, I got an Apple two E
computer from my bar Mitzvah. Every so often I'd have
to pop up in the back and insert a new
memory card or some kind of expansion card, and every
time I did it, I thought to myself, these are
the skills that are going to set me up when
I go to Stanford and spend four years using this
(00:47):
thing to write humor articles. Those expansion cards, the chips
that were part of them, with their tiny bits of
metal soldered onto a green board, were just a total
mystery to me. They look like someone from shop class
with teeny tiny hands had gotten stoned and made a maze.
(01:08):
They were at technolog I gave no more thought to
than the engine of a car. I didn't ever think
about how impressive it was to make something so intricate,
and could never have imagined how infinitesimal those chips would
become in like a few decades, so tiny that the
human eye can't even perceive them, how they'd be inside
(01:32):
everything driving like every part of our lives. The reason
I was never able to imagine any of this is
because those kids in shop class would never share their weed.
Writing is hard.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Who's got that kind of time when you're already busy
trying to bege'll stand so it turns on a mic.
Maybe the twodle is enough.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Because a journalist trand.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Has got in that toole time outist single story just
listen to smart People's conversation. Film with Information is the story.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Of nearly all of the high end micro chips in
the world. The ones we depend on for our phones
and cars and Fauci's vaccinations are manufactured in this unassuming
(02:35):
factory in a small city in Taiwan. Taiwan's in a
very vulnerable position because China claims the country as part
of its own. The situation so delicate the US won't
even recognize it as a country. So Taiwan has found
a strategy to use this factory to help protect itself
from China. The chip factory is so key the Taiwan's
(02:56):
survival that very few people outside of the company get
to go inside. Virginia Heffernan is one of the few
reporters who got to visit and she wrote about it
for Wired. Okay, so you're listening to this podcast that's
clearly inferior to mine, but you hear a quote that
gets you interested in microships.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yeah. I mean, let's not even bother to name the podcast.
This is a minor, minor podcast that may or may
not be from a major name at the New York Times,
and he was interviewing the economic historian Adam Twos, and
Twos started to say, the fabs in Taiwan don't just
protect us from China and serve as the silicon shield.
(03:38):
To be inside the FABS is to be up against
the face of God.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Our ability to do this stuff at nanoscale is, you know,
us up against the face of God in a sense.
What was he talking about?
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Right? So I was like rewind rewind rewind rewind because
what the hell the word in there that I was
I was missing a word that he was likening to
the face of God, and that word was fabs. FABS
What is that? It turns out it's short for fabricators.
So these are the factories that make microchips in Taiwan.
(04:14):
How in the freaking world could you be up against
the face of God to go in any factory, I
had to find out.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
All right, So you're interested in seeing microships, which are
used for everything.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Right, They are in virtually everything with an on off switch,
and a lot of other things too. So they're in
nuclear weapons, they're in our cars, they're in planes, of course,
and they're in every single iPhone, every single iPad, every
single mac.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Okay, so you're interested in learning more about microchips. Who
do you call first?
Speaker 2 (04:48):
That's a good question. So I call my brother in law,
who is a chip designer, and he.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Was you should already know about chips then, right.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yeah, except that when I met him, I just registered.
He was an engineer, he worked at IBM. He could
build his own Roku device like he just tacked one together.
So that was sort of what I had in my mind, somewhere.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
To save thirty bucks.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
By the way, such a great way to save thirty dollars.
But I finally decided. I called them up and said
what are fabs? And he said, ugh, do you really
want to know this? And I said, Adam Twos said
it's like being up against the face of God. And
Mark said, you know, it kind of is, and he
explained to me, you know that Intel had lost a
(05:33):
lot of ground to this Taiwanese giant known boringly as TSMC,
the Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturing company.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
That's the name they chose to go with TSMC. Yes,
it's no Google. It's kind of the opposite. It's like
trying to be as like uninteresting as possible.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
And that's for a reason. They're like a very quiet company.
They just make chips and you never see their name
on anything.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Do the people that hire them to make chips want
them to be quiet?
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Yeah, Well there's a lot of secrecy involved. So they
have Apple as their customer, but they don't sell any
finished products. They just create the chips in collaboration with
the companies. It's like a printing press saying to you,
I'm not going to steal the plot of your novel.
All you need to do is like give us that thing.
We're going to print it and then you can sell it.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
How big a company is TSMC.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
It is often ranked as the tenth biggest company in
the world. Lots of people call it the most powerful
company in the world. TSMC is bigger than Meta, It's
sometimes bigger than Tesla.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
So you want to go to this incredibly secretive factory.
Do they let journalists in?
Speaker 2 (06:42):
They mostly don't. So I asked the beleaguered PR person there.
I told him about the Face of God thing, and
I just said, look, I'm not looking for state secrets
and I'm not looking for corporate secrets. That said, I
am looking for this kind of religious experience that I've
been led to believe exists there, and that's my pitch
(07:03):
to you. What he said was no, like that. I
was like, I'm hearing I have a chance, you know,
like that, So I'm going to call you back, and
basically he rejected me. He rejected me like, you know,
three times, like as if you know you're trying to
convert to Judaism or something. Go away, go away, go away? Okay?
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Is how that is the rule. When someone wants to
convert to Judaism. The rabbi is supposed to say no
three times.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Which I did, by the way, so I've.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Been Wow, you got past the rabbis, you might as
well try and get past the publicist.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
And so you fly to Taiwan and it's not in Taipei, right,
where is this factory.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
It's in a place called sin Chu. It's like a
small city that's mostly a very dull office park.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Does it take you a long time to get there?
Speaker 2 (07:52):
It was an eighteen hour flight. Eighteen hours is actually
the longest seven to seventy seven can stay in the air.
Why was it? Why should they not have my bags
when I landed? Because when we got off the plane,
they just said Ukraine War, Ukraine War, Ukraine War. There
was Russian airspace that had to be or of navigated.
It was extremely interesting to see how Taiwan had been
(08:12):
affected by it because they see themselves as like a
sister state to Ukraine. Well, they are neighbors to a
giant nuclear power that wants to annex it, so even
more than Ukraine. It's in a vulnerable place.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
And part of their strategy to stay safe and not
be taken over by China. Is this very factory that
you're going to Does this happen organically or is this plant?
Speaker 2 (08:41):
So Taiwan realized that it was making itself indispensable to
no one with umbrellas.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
They made a ton of umbrellas, right, like every.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Umbrella like the world. Yeah, they monopolize umbrellas. I think
till the late seventies, and just like the industrial Midwest,
they just started losing stuff to China, and all these
towns started wondering what to do. So they just retrained
with incredible engineering schools and it worked. They became the
great engineers in the world. But so when they turned
(09:12):
themselves to high tech, it was like this very deliberate
effort to make the island of Taiwan indispensable to the
world and especially to the United States, so we would
protect them from Chinese aggression. And TSMC itself has the
nickname the Sacred Mountain that protects Taiwan.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
The Sacred Mountain that protects Taiwan. Yes, when we come back,
Virginia is going to put on a very cool outfit
and finally get into that factory. But first our advertisers
have some crappy, non Taiwanese umbrellas to sell you. So
(09:53):
how are these chips actually made?
Speaker 2 (09:55):
So the first semiconductor factory, they were putting like, you know,
two transistors together, so you know, like a little column
with a lot of wires around it, and then it
would connect to another little column with a lot of
wires around, right, But they realized the two columns could
conduct electricity between them. If they just both sat on something,
(10:16):
they didn't need to be wired together. They could just
sit on a material that was conductive and then they
could communicate with each other. Right, So they take out
the wires and they just put them on a flat thing,
a chip. The material that it sat on didn't need
to be either entirely conductive or entirely insulating. It needed
to have options. So that's why they get a semiconductor material,
(10:39):
and silicon works really well for that. All right, So
they have two transistors, let's say, sitting on a piece
of silicon. They slowly, slowly were realizing that they could
make these things smaller so they could get more processing
power on the same chip. So then they get it
to four. Say, then they get it to eight.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
How big is a chip that they're getting eight trans.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
So these chips are maybe the size of a quarter
okay at the time, right, And the way that they're
putting them on is first they're just fixing little metal things.
But then they realize that they can make these transistors
with lithography. So they start carving with not knives and wax,
(11:20):
but with light. And the light they use is first
in the visible range. It's like sort of slower wavelengths,
and then they start using light further up the spectrum
with like tighter, smaller wavelengths, so ultraviolet light and then
extreme ultraviolet light till now you know they're carving on
(11:41):
basically material that's like four atoms thick, and that's how
you can get from a piece of silicon to Gmail Instagram.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Does it strike you at some point that you've come
all this way to see something that's too small to
be seen? It did.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Michael, the pr PR person kept being like, there's not
much to see in there, and I finally was like,
I mean even I know that, I realized I won't
see much.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Okay, so you finally are going to get to enter
this factory. Are you nervous in advance of this tour?
Speaker 2 (12:17):
So the thing I was nervous about was like I
kept picturing Woody Allen and Annie Hall like sneezing into
the cocaine and blowing cocaine. Yeah, I thought like I
might do that, but it would be like with electrons,
you know, I would be like, oh, all the protons.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Like a clumsy American walking into this like perfect space
and you're gonna knock exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
So I just I really wanted to, like when I
moved through, to like get my hands washed, move into
this incredibly clean room. I didn't want to contaminate it
with my horrible American ways.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Do you walk in there and like that outfit that
they need when they want to steal et? Do you
have the full right?
Speaker 2 (12:56):
I had to put on a bunny suit gown up
they call they called a bunny suit, and no one
is like thinks of a cooler name for it.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
It's just like, look at all like a bunny suit, which,
because it's white, it's a spaceman suit.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
It's a good point.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Is it hard to walk around in that gown? Or
things are mine? You know?
Speaker 2 (13:14):
It's like a super sweaty raincoat on all parts of
you and the COVID mask. So these are clean rooms.
So if we're breathing an infinite number of dust particles
per cubic yard of air, it's about one hundred particles
in this place. I was like, oh, does a piece
of dust ever get in the machinery? And they looked
(13:36):
at me blankly, because what they're worried about is like
a particle of neon gas gunning on there wait.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
So what does that feel like? You're in the cleanest
air you'll ever be in in your whole life.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Exactly, it felt a little blander like. It turns out,
I think that like the dust we breathe feels like
seasoning or something to me. But the clarity from what
I could see was amazing, Like that felt near religious,
Like it felt like a veil had been lifted or
scales had fallen from my eye.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
You mean visually the room just ye different.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Yes, visually the room looked different. Like the main impression
is that it's white. It's basically a bunch of just
like white churning machines that could be just like giant
old Xerox machines or something. And you're just sensitive to
the fact that these tiny, tiny transistors are being etched
on atoms with light somehow in the machines. But I
(14:33):
went in and I suddenly thought, what a moving human
aspiration to try to make things immaculate. Like I sort
of started to cry while I was walking around, like
my eyes missed it up, and I thought, tears are
so contaminating. It just seems like human cells are just
(14:53):
kind of just they like besmirch everything. They touch, you know,
I was very sensitive to like did I have COVID
microbes in my lungs? So I was thinking about all that,
and then I was thinking about the design of a
hospital to be in germ free, to be immaculate. And
then at once it seemed to me not just a hospital,
(15:15):
but like a nicke you, like a place where like
little tiny precious bodies were between life and whatever comes
before life. So these tiny tiny transistors that are made
etched on atoms by it's incredible art are just in
(15:36):
there fighting for their lives. Some of them don't make
it because they get some kind of contamination. And they're
the product of this extraordinary human collaboration made possible by
the like corniest values of the Enlightenment that like science
and art progressed together. And I just thought, we all
(15:56):
are like almost holding our breath because we want them
to live so much. And the physicists here, and the
engineers here, and the technicians here, and the operators here
and even me are just so in tested in making
this project continue.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
I'm starting to see what the face of God means.
It's like humans are not meant to be able to
like understand the vastness of the universe or the tininess
of an atom. And in this case, people are messing
with things that humans can't see. And so that is
like getting into a realm, way beyond where we should be.
(16:33):
Is that what the face of God means?
Speaker 2 (16:35):
That is absolutely what I came to understand that you
it is crazy. You start to see the effects of atoms.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Sounds like of these maternal feelings about these microchips, which
I kind of get. And at a time when there's COVID,
when democracy is in trouble, it must feel like you're
walking into the last room with the hopes of humanity
that you've grown up with.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
I mean, yes, I feel like I was standing there thinking, like,
what a beautiful system. I was just inventing it in
my head and thinking, and it's a protection against autocracy,
which stifles wisdom and stifles innovation and development and progress.
And I just was so delighted with my master ideology.
And then all of a sudden I realized I had
(17:26):
just reinvented neoliberalism.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Okay, as cool as all this is, it's a factory, right, Like,
are people happy who work there?
Speaker 2 (17:35):
If you look at glassdoor, you'll see that not everyone
loves it. They're on call far too much, they're exhausted.
I was trying to find out why engineers would go
to work at TSMC since they probably could go to Google. There.
You know, it's like special, like nap rooms plus massages,
plus aromatherapy plus pecon crusted rockfish.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Wait, what's lunch like at TSMC.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Well, you can get ten percent off at Burger King
and seven eleven. So never let them say that TSMC
doesn't spoil its employees. But the work itself is so extraordinary.
I mean, you're you're etching on Adams. If you're drawn
to engineering. This is the greatest job in the world.
It's a chance to do it at the highest level.
It's the chance to do it for your country, for
(18:21):
the promise of democracy, for the further it's of progress.
You're like basically treated like thank you for your service
as you walk around the country. Like one thing they
say is girls don't like TSMC engineers, but their mothers do, Like, oh.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
That was me. That was always And I thought it
would change when I got older, because I thought like, oh,
everyone's mom thinks, you know that their daughter should date me.
Eventually I'll get old enough or I'm dating moms. But
then I got old enough and it was just like
their moms still approved of me. There's no oh my gosh,
turtles all the way down.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Yeah, maybe that's go. What's going on with TSMC too?
But your country respects you? How about that?
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Screw that? So, but are they like Silicon Valley bros
who like spend their money in splashy ways or Warren
Buffett style, like not showing off with their money.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
They don't. It's not not showing off, but also that
the great way to like spend your time is I
mean tennis chess. You know, they're billionaires and they roll
up their sleeves and like serve soup through their churches.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
And yeah, Joe Biden has made this whole idea of
democracy and chips part of a plan. How did that work?
Speaker 2 (19:32):
In twenty twenty two the Chips and Science Act, and
Keith Krock, who was in the State Department, heavily spearheaded
this effort. It onshore TSMC fabs to the US, and
one of them, in Phoenix, is slated to open in
the fall. I think, why.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Would you want them in the US if the whole
point was to protect Taiwan.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Yeah, why indeed would you want them in the US
because you don't want the US to be like, oh
we can all we can just make them here. So
you know, we're cutting you loose, Taiwan and leaving you
at the mercy of China. We're not going to protect you,
We're not going to be allied with you. That was
very carefully worked out in part by Keith Kruck, And
what he made happen is made sure that the FABS
(20:14):
in Arizona are a subsidiary of TSMC. All the researches
at TSMC, all the training is at TSMC, and that basically,
you know, just because we have you know, some of
the materials here, we still need cent too to give
the orders in the research. And also it was an
act of trust, you know, it's another way of sealing
(20:36):
the alliance between the two countries and making our position
of strategic ambiguity less ambiguous.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Are the TSMC people worried that like, oh, the lazy
Americans who work at Google and eat the pecan crusted
chicken aren't going to be up to snuff and work
hard at our Phoenix factories.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Wasn't it Rockfish not just chicken the dole. Lots of
people have long stated that Taiwan has the best trained
engineers in the world. American engineers are often like we
have obviously we have a great nuclear probe, great space program,
but American engineers apparently like to work on things they
can see more, they like big things. So there is
(21:16):
a running stereotype that the Americans who came to train
and since Chew were lazy and we're just like you know,
adhd adult duds.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Would you want to work at TSMC?
Speaker 2 (21:30):
I could never work at TSMC, but I can stand
in awe of it.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
I'm glad you're still a journalist and not working at
a chip factory.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Yeah, they didn't make me an offer.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Virginia Heffernan, I'm always a fan of yours, and I
particularly loved I saw the face of gold in a
semiconductor factory that you wrote on the cover of Wired,
and it is the story of the week. Thank you
so much for talking.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
To me, such a pleasure. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
I'm staring at a chip right now and it is
truly a wonder like I have no idea how this
thing's made. A sigilant maltodextree. Why does it say contains milk?
It's a Dill pickle flavored potato chip. Why would you
need milk to make that? We have come so far
(22:22):
with technology, it's like important to take a moment, and
I appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
At the end of the show, what's next for Joel Stein?
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Maybe you'll take a nap. Our show is produced by
Joey fish Ground, mo La Bard, and Nishavenka. It was
edited by Lydia jeden Kopp. Our engineer is Amanda kay Wang,
and our executive producer is kath Ronald Cherrado. Our theme
song was produced by Jonathan Colton. A special thanks to
(22:55):
my voice coach Vicky Merrick and my consulting producer Laurence Alasnik.
To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. I'm
Joel Stein and this is story of the week.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Taiwan was still masking when I was there in October,
so I had to take two and ninety five masks.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Is two better because I know what condoms? Two is worse?
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Oh, I mean I don't know about sensation too.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
No, I mean like no, it's more danger of it,
like falling off or not working.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
You know.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
It's like like if you go to a mosque, you
want to like really cover up so they show your
deference and modesty.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Okay,
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
I'm Virginia Hiffernan, and I wrote I saw the Face
of God in a semiconductor factory for Wired, and it's
the story of the week.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
When I was thirteen, I got an Apple two E
computer from my bar Mitzvah. Every so often I'd have
to pop up in the back and insert a new
memory card or some kind of expansion card, and every
time I did it, I thought to myself, these are
the skills that are going to set me up when
I go to Stanford and spend four years using this
(00:47):
thing to write humor articles. Those expansion cards, the chips
that were part of them, with their tiny bits of
metal soldered onto a green board, were just a total
mystery to me. They look like someone from shop class
with teeny tiny hands had gotten stoned and made a maze.
(01:08):
They were at technolog I gave no more thought to
than the engine of a car. I didn't ever think
about how impressive it was to make something so intricate,
and could never have imagined how infinitesimal those chips would
become in like a few decades, so tiny that the
human eye can't even perceive them, how they'd be inside
(01:32):
everything driving like every part of our lives. The reason
I was never able to imagine any of this is
because those kids in shop class would never share their weed.
Writing is hard.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Who's got that kind of time when you're already busy
trying to bege'll stand so it turns on a mic.
Maybe the twodle is enough.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Because a journalist trand.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Has got in that toole time outist single story just
listen to smart People's conversation. Film with Information is the story.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Of nearly all of the high end micro chips in
the world. The ones we depend on for our phones
and cars and Fauci's vaccinations are manufactured in this unassuming
(02:35):
factory in a small city in Taiwan. Taiwan's in a
very vulnerable position because China claims the country as part
of its own. The situation so delicate the US won't
even recognize it as a country. So Taiwan has found
a strategy to use this factory to help protect itself
from China. The chip factory is so key the Taiwan's
(02:56):
survival that very few people outside of the company get
to go inside. Virginia Heffernan is one of the few
reporters who got to visit and she wrote about it
for Wired. Okay, so you're listening to this podcast that's
clearly inferior to mine, but you hear a quote that
gets you interested in microships.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yeah. I mean, let's not even bother to name the podcast.
This is a minor, minor podcast that may or may
not be from a major name at the New York Times,
and he was interviewing the economic historian Adam Twos, and
Twos started to say, the fabs in Taiwan don't just
protect us from China and serve as the silicon shield.
(03:38):
To be inside the FABS is to be up against
the face of God.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Our ability to do this stuff at nanoscale is, you know,
us up against the face of God in a sense.
What was he talking about?
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Right? So I was like rewind rewind rewind rewind because
what the hell the word in there that I was
I was missing a word that he was likening to
the face of God, and that word was fabs. FABS
What is that? It turns out it's short for fabricators.
So these are the factories that make microchips in Taiwan.
(04:14):
How in the freaking world could you be up against
the face of God to go in any factory, I
had to find out.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
All right, So you're interested in seeing microships, which are
used for everything.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Right, They are in virtually everything with an on off switch,
and a lot of other things too. So they're in
nuclear weapons, they're in our cars, they're in planes, of course,
and they're in every single iPhone, every single iPad, every
single mac.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Okay, so you're interested in learning more about microchips. Who
do you call first?
Speaker 2 (04:48):
That's a good question. So I call my brother in law,
who is a chip designer, and he.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Was you should already know about chips then, right.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yeah, except that when I met him, I just registered.
He was an engineer, he worked at IBM. He could
build his own Roku device like he just tacked one together.
So that was sort of what I had in my mind, somewhere.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
To save thirty bucks.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
By the way, such a great way to save thirty dollars.
But I finally decided. I called them up and said
what are fabs? And he said, ugh, do you really
want to know this? And I said, Adam Twos said
it's like being up against the face of God. And
Mark said, you know, it kind of is, and he
explained to me, you know that Intel had lost a
(05:33):
lot of ground to this Taiwanese giant known boringly as TSMC,
the Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturing company.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
That's the name they chose to go with TSMC. Yes,
it's no Google. It's kind of the opposite. It's like
trying to be as like uninteresting as possible.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
And that's for a reason. They're like a very quiet company.
They just make chips and you never see their name
on anything.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Do the people that hire them to make chips want
them to be quiet?
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Yeah, Well there's a lot of secrecy involved. So they
have Apple as their customer, but they don't sell any
finished products. They just create the chips in collaboration with
the companies. It's like a printing press saying to you,
I'm not going to steal the plot of your novel.
All you need to do is like give us that thing.
We're going to print it and then you can sell it.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
How big a company is TSMC.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
It is often ranked as the tenth biggest company in
the world. Lots of people call it the most powerful
company in the world. TSMC is bigger than Meta, It's
sometimes bigger than Tesla.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
So you want to go to this incredibly secretive factory.
Do they let journalists in?
Speaker 2 (06:42):
They mostly don't. So I asked the beleaguered PR person there.
I told him about the Face of God thing, and
I just said, look, I'm not looking for state secrets
and I'm not looking for corporate secrets. That said, I
am looking for this kind of religious experience that I've
been led to believe exists there, and that's my pitch
(07:03):
to you. What he said was no, like that. I
was like, I'm hearing I have a chance, you know,
like that, So I'm going to call you back, and
basically he rejected me. He rejected me like, you know,
three times, like as if you know you're trying to
convert to Judaism or something. Go away, go away, go away? Okay?
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Is how that is the rule. When someone wants to
convert to Judaism. The rabbi is supposed to say no
three times.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Which I did, by the way, so I've.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Been Wow, you got past the rabbis, you might as
well try and get past the publicist.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
And so you fly to Taiwan and it's not in Taipei, right,
where is this factory.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
It's in a place called sin Chu. It's like a
small city that's mostly a very dull office park.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Does it take you a long time to get there?
Speaker 2 (07:52):
It was an eighteen hour flight. Eighteen hours is actually
the longest seven to seventy seven can stay in the air.
Why was it? Why should they not have my bags
when I landed? Because when we got off the plane,
they just said Ukraine War, Ukraine War, Ukraine War. There
was Russian airspace that had to be or of navigated.
It was extremely interesting to see how Taiwan had been
(08:12):
affected by it because they see themselves as like a
sister state to Ukraine. Well, they are neighbors to a
giant nuclear power that wants to annex it, so even
more than Ukraine. It's in a vulnerable place.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
And part of their strategy to stay safe and not
be taken over by China. Is this very factory that
you're going to Does this happen organically or is this plant?
Speaker 2 (08:41):
So Taiwan realized that it was making itself indispensable to
no one with umbrellas.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
They made a ton of umbrellas, right, like every.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Umbrella like the world. Yeah, they monopolize umbrellas. I think
till the late seventies, and just like the industrial Midwest,
they just started losing stuff to China, and all these
towns started wondering what to do. So they just retrained
with incredible engineering schools and it worked. They became the
great engineers in the world. But so when they turned
(09:12):
themselves to high tech, it was like this very deliberate
effort to make the island of Taiwan indispensable to the
world and especially to the United States, so we would
protect them from Chinese aggression. And TSMC itself has the
nickname the Sacred Mountain that protects Taiwan.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
The Sacred Mountain that protects Taiwan. Yes, when we come back,
Virginia is going to put on a very cool outfit
and finally get into that factory. But first our advertisers
have some crappy, non Taiwanese umbrellas to sell you. So
(09:53):
how are these chips actually made?
Speaker 2 (09:55):
So the first semiconductor factory, they were putting like, you know,
two transistors together, so you know, like a little column
with a lot of wires around it, and then it
would connect to another little column with a lot of
wires around, right, But they realized the two columns could
conduct electricity between them. If they just both sat on something,
(10:16):
they didn't need to be wired together. They could just
sit on a material that was conductive and then they
could communicate with each other. Right, So they take out
the wires and they just put them on a flat thing,
a chip. The material that it sat on didn't need
to be either entirely conductive or entirely insulating. It needed
to have options. So that's why they get a semiconductor material,
(10:39):
and silicon works really well for that. All right, So
they have two transistors, let's say, sitting on a piece
of silicon. They slowly, slowly were realizing that they could
make these things smaller so they could get more processing
power on the same chip. So then they get it
to four. Say, then they get it to eight.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
How big is a chip that they're getting eight trans.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
So these chips are maybe the size of a quarter
okay at the time, right, And the way that they're
putting them on is first they're just fixing little metal things.
But then they realize that they can make these transistors
with lithography. So they start carving with not knives and wax,
(11:20):
but with light. And the light they use is first
in the visible range. It's like sort of slower wavelengths,
and then they start using light further up the spectrum
with like tighter, smaller wavelengths, so ultraviolet light and then
extreme ultraviolet light till now you know they're carving on
(11:41):
basically material that's like four atoms thick, and that's how
you can get from a piece of silicon to Gmail Instagram.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Does it strike you at some point that you've come
all this way to see something that's too small to
be seen? It did.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Michael, the pr PR person kept being like, there's not
much to see in there, and I finally was like,
I mean even I know that, I realized I won't
see much.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Okay, so you finally are going to get to enter
this factory. Are you nervous in advance of this tour?
Speaker 2 (12:17):
So the thing I was nervous about was like I
kept picturing Woody Allen and Annie Hall like sneezing into
the cocaine and blowing cocaine. Yeah, I thought like I
might do that, but it would be like with electrons,
you know, I would be like, oh, all the protons.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Like a clumsy American walking into this like perfect space
and you're gonna knock exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
So I just I really wanted to, like when I
moved through, to like get my hands washed, move into
this incredibly clean room. I didn't want to contaminate it
with my horrible American ways.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Do you walk in there and like that outfit that
they need when they want to steal et? Do you
have the full right?
Speaker 2 (12:56):
I had to put on a bunny suit gown up
they call they called a bunny suit, and no one
is like thinks of a cooler name for it.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
It's just like, look at all like a bunny suit, which,
because it's white, it's a spaceman suit.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
It's a good point.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Is it hard to walk around in that gown? Or
things are mine? You know?
Speaker 2 (13:14):
It's like a super sweaty raincoat on all parts of
you and the COVID mask. So these are clean rooms.
So if we're breathing an infinite number of dust particles
per cubic yard of air, it's about one hundred particles
in this place. I was like, oh, does a piece
of dust ever get in the machinery? And they looked
(13:36):
at me blankly, because what they're worried about is like
a particle of neon gas gunning on there wait.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
So what does that feel like? You're in the cleanest
air you'll ever be in in your whole life.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Exactly, it felt a little blander like. It turns out,
I think that like the dust we breathe feels like
seasoning or something to me. But the clarity from what
I could see was amazing, Like that felt near religious,
Like it felt like a veil had been lifted or
scales had fallen from my eye.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
You mean visually the room just ye different.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Yes, visually the room looked different. Like the main impression
is that it's white. It's basically a bunch of just
like white churning machines that could be just like giant
old Xerox machines or something. And you're just sensitive to
the fact that these tiny, tiny transistors are being etched
on atoms with light somehow in the machines. But I
(14:33):
went in and I suddenly thought, what a moving human
aspiration to try to make things immaculate. Like I sort
of started to cry while I was walking around, like
my eyes missed it up, and I thought, tears are
so contaminating. It just seems like human cells are just
(14:53):
kind of just they like besmirch everything. They touch, you know,
I was very sensitive to like did I have COVID
microbes in my lungs? So I was thinking about all that,
and then I was thinking about the design of a
hospital to be in germ free, to be immaculate. And
then at once it seemed to me not just a hospital,
(15:15):
but like a nicke you, like a place where like
little tiny precious bodies were between life and whatever comes
before life. So these tiny tiny transistors that are made
etched on atoms by it's incredible art are just in
(15:36):
there fighting for their lives. Some of them don't make
it because they get some kind of contamination. And they're
the product of this extraordinary human collaboration made possible by
the like corniest values of the Enlightenment that like science
and art progressed together. And I just thought, we all
(15:56):
are like almost holding our breath because we want them
to live so much. And the physicists here, and the
engineers here, and the technicians here, and the operators here
and even me are just so in tested in making
this project continue.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
I'm starting to see what the face of God means.
It's like humans are not meant to be able to
like understand the vastness of the universe or the tininess
of an atom. And in this case, people are messing
with things that humans can't see. And so that is
like getting into a realm, way beyond where we should be.
(16:33):
Is that what the face of God means?
Speaker 2 (16:35):
That is absolutely what I came to understand that you
it is crazy. You start to see the effects of atoms.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Sounds like of these maternal feelings about these microchips, which
I kind of get. And at a time when there's COVID,
when democracy is in trouble, it must feel like you're
walking into the last room with the hopes of humanity
that you've grown up with.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
I mean, yes, I feel like I was standing there thinking, like,
what a beautiful system. I was just inventing it in
my head and thinking, and it's a protection against autocracy,
which stifles wisdom and stifles innovation and development and progress.
And I just was so delighted with my master ideology.
And then all of a sudden I realized I had
(17:26):
just reinvented neoliberalism.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Okay, as cool as all this is, it's a factory, right, Like,
are people happy who work there?
Speaker 2 (17:35):
If you look at glassdoor, you'll see that not everyone
loves it. They're on call far too much, they're exhausted.
I was trying to find out why engineers would go
to work at TSMC since they probably could go to Google. There.
You know, it's like special, like nap rooms plus massages,
plus aromatherapy plus pecon crusted rockfish.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Wait, what's lunch like at TSMC.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Well, you can get ten percent off at Burger King
and seven eleven. So never let them say that TSMC
doesn't spoil its employees. But the work itself is so extraordinary.
I mean, you're you're etching on Adams. If you're drawn
to engineering. This is the greatest job in the world.
It's a chance to do it at the highest level.
It's the chance to do it for your country, for
(18:21):
the promise of democracy, for the further it's of progress.
You're like basically treated like thank you for your service
as you walk around the country. Like one thing they
say is girls don't like TSMC engineers, but their mothers do, Like, oh.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
That was me. That was always And I thought it
would change when I got older, because I thought like, oh,
everyone's mom thinks, you know that their daughter should date me.
Eventually I'll get old enough or I'm dating moms. But
then I got old enough and it was just like
their moms still approved of me. There's no oh my gosh,
turtles all the way down.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Yeah, maybe that's go. What's going on with TSMC too?
But your country respects you? How about that?
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Screw that? So, but are they like Silicon Valley bros
who like spend their money in splashy ways or Warren
Buffett style, like not showing off with their money.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
They don't. It's not not showing off, but also that
the great way to like spend your time is I
mean tennis chess. You know, they're billionaires and they roll
up their sleeves and like serve soup through their churches.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
And yeah, Joe Biden has made this whole idea of
democracy and chips part of a plan. How did that work?
Speaker 2 (19:32):
In twenty twenty two the Chips and Science Act, and
Keith Krock, who was in the State Department, heavily spearheaded
this effort. It onshore TSMC fabs to the US, and
one of them, in Phoenix, is slated to open in
the fall. I think, why.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Would you want them in the US if the whole
point was to protect Taiwan.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Yeah, why indeed would you want them in the US
because you don't want the US to be like, oh
we can all we can just make them here. So
you know, we're cutting you loose, Taiwan and leaving you
at the mercy of China. We're not going to protect you,
We're not going to be allied with you. That was
very carefully worked out in part by Keith Kruck, And
what he made happen is made sure that the FABS
(20:14):
in Arizona are a subsidiary of TSMC. All the researches
at TSMC, all the training is at TSMC, and that basically,
you know, just because we have you know, some of
the materials here, we still need cent too to give
the orders in the research. And also it was an
act of trust, you know, it's another way of sealing
(20:36):
the alliance between the two countries and making our position
of strategic ambiguity less ambiguous.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Are the TSMC people worried that like, oh, the lazy
Americans who work at Google and eat the pecan crusted
chicken aren't going to be up to snuff and work
hard at our Phoenix factories.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Wasn't it Rockfish not just chicken the dole. Lots of
people have long stated that Taiwan has the best trained
engineers in the world. American engineers are often like we
have obviously we have a great nuclear probe, great space program,
but American engineers apparently like to work on things they
can see more, they like big things. So there is
(21:16):
a running stereotype that the Americans who came to train
and since Chew were lazy and we're just like you know,
adhd adult duds.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Would you want to work at TSMC?
Speaker 2 (21:30):
I could never work at TSMC, but I can stand
in awe of it.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
I'm glad you're still a journalist and not working at
a chip factory.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Yeah, they didn't make me an offer.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Virginia Heffernan, I'm always a fan of yours, and I
particularly loved I saw the face of gold in a
semiconductor factory that you wrote on the cover of Wired,
and it is the story of the week. Thank you
so much for talking.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
To me, such a pleasure. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
I'm staring at a chip right now and it is
truly a wonder like I have no idea how this
thing's made. A sigilant maltodextree. Why does it say contains milk?
It's a Dill pickle flavored potato chip. Why would you
need milk to make that? We have come so far
(22:22):
with technology, it's like important to take a moment, and
I appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
At the end of the show, what's next for Joel Stein?
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Maybe you'll take a nap. Our show is produced by
Joey fish Ground, mo La Bard, and Nishavenka. It was
edited by Lydia jeden Kopp. Our engineer is Amanda kay Wang,
and our executive producer is kath Ronald Cherrado. Our theme
song was produced by Jonathan Colton. A special thanks to
(22:55):
my voice coach Vicky Merrick and my consulting producer Laurence Alasnik.
To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. I'm
Joel Stein and this is story of the week.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Taiwan was still masking when I was there in October,
so I had to take two and ninety five masks.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Is two better because I know what condoms? Two is worse?
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Oh, I mean I don't know about sensation too.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
No, I mean like no, it's more danger of it,
like falling off or not working.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
You know.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
It's like like if you go to a mosque, you
want to like really cover up so they show your
deference and modesty.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Okay,
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