EP#432: Remote Ownership

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Parker Dillmann (00:10):
Welcome to circuit break from MacroFab, a
weekly podcast about all thingsengineering, DIY projects,
manufacturing, industry news,and disabling equipment. We're
your hosts, electricalengineers, Parker Dillmann.

Stephen Kraig (00:24):
And Stephen Kraig.

This is episode 432. So before we get started, I
have an update from MacroFab. Iwrote an article about the
tariffs we talked about lastweek it's I only really so what
this article is is focusing onhow much your bill of materials
will go up because this newtariff. Well, it's not even a

(00:47):
new tariff. It's increasing oftariffs that already exist.
Right.

It's augmenting it. Yeah. Augmenting.

Pray we don't augment it further. So the the
one I focused on it for thearticle was the semiconductor
tariff because that's what'sgoing to affect probably
everyone that talks or nottalks. Everyone that's listening
to this podcast, and that isbumping semiconductor tariff
from 25% to 50% over I thinkit's, like, the next year or 2,

(01:18):
something like that.Unfortunately, they there's not
a lot of technical detailsaround what semiconductors mean
because there's a lot ofdifferent what's called
harmonized tariff codes, HTScodes.

Right.

That deal with this kind of stuff, and if
basically, you need to find whatcomponent falls under whatever
the HTS code is, that's what thetariff is. And so I just went in
and just picked what I thoughtwere HTS codes that would be
affected by this. There's, like,a list of, like, 20 or 25 of
them. I posted them in the blogpost, and they're like MOSFETs,

(01:54):
microcontrollers, LEDs, stuffthat would have semiconductors
in it. And then what I did is Iwent and pulled the last year of
invoices from our our invoicesfrom Mauser and Digi Key.

Oh, wow. That's those are probably significant.

Yeah. There's there's a lot of data there.

Yeah.

And so what what's so you can't go the
reason why I was pulling theinvoices is is we can't go,
like, you, me, anyone else. Youcan't Mouser won't tell you or
Digi Key for this matter. Won'ttell you what the HTS code of
the component. I think actuallyDigi Key tells you the HTS code

(02:35):
now at the bottom of the bottomof the part. They actually will
tell you HS code, But they won'ttell you the country of origin.
Okay?

I thought they did.

Do they now?

I don't know. But I I swear you could get both on
Mouser at least.

No. Because Mouser only puts it on the
invoice.

Oh, yeah. But they don't broadcast it on the
website.

Yeah. It's not on the website. And and you
can't go through the API eitherand get it. And so

I'm on Digi Key right now just looking at a Joe
Schmoe op amp, and the the HTScode is on there.

Yeah. The HTS code's there, but not the COO,
country of origin. Right. And sowhat I did was but they when
when you buy the part, they haveto tell you what the country of
origin is on the packaging. So Ibasically got all that data from
the invoices.
The good thing is we actuallyscan all that information in on

(03:35):
inbound inspection. So a lot ofit, I was able to just query in
our database. And then Ibasically built I correlated the
invoices with with actual PCBstuff, and I was able to get
what and then I basicallyfiltered it out being like hey
it's these hgs codes and onlycountry origin China is affected

(03:56):
And I basically found out thatI'm still crunching more and
more data, but it's only aaverage increase of 1.72% on
bill of material increase.

Oh, due to the the last hike. Right? Not this
current one.

Yes. From From the current hike to the next
one, it's only a 1.72% increaseon average over billed material.
And, well, I I wanna dig furtherinto this data because what it
looks like is basically over thepast couple years since the
tariff increase, people are Idon't know this for sure, but

(04:35):
this is what it looks like fromits top level. It's people are
actually actively pickingcomponents that are not made in
China.

I don't know if it's words, the tariffs are
doing what?

don't know if it's because of cost reasons or
they are diversifying supplychains or whatever. I don't know
that, but that's what it lookslike and what I want to do is
like I want to graph out likeover time like percentage of
bill materials that are COOChina and seeing how that
correlates over time does thatincrease or decrease or how does

(05:09):
that change so I'm gonna startmaking, like, blog posts about
this kind of data. I think thatmight be interesting.

As it trends?

Yeah. Yeah. So I wanna I need to finish up
building all the data firstbecause I'm, like, combining
multiple different sourcestogether and put package it
together. And what I wanna kindado is set it up where it's like
a a part trend database that soI can query data or trends
against and see if I can figureout if there are trends like

(05:41):
this where, like, people arepicking less Chinese parts or or
picking more. Were peopleshifting?
What's what we're talking aboutlast week was most Chinese
semiconductors we're talkingabout revenue. Right?
Where Chinese the Chinasemiconductor revenue only
accounts for 17%, but theyaccount for oh, what was it? I I

(06:04):
I found it last week.

In terms of volume well, yeah. You you
you're going for a volumenumber. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So US manufactured volume
is only 8%, and China's 22% byvolume.

Yeah.

But US revenue is 40% for 17th China. So it's
flipped around.

Yeah. We make fewer things, but they're more
expensive.

Yeah. And that's actually what I'm seeing
is the more pricier componentswere made in Taiwan, Malaysia,
and and United States, whereasthe cheaper semiconductors were
typically made in, actually,almost all over the place. There
were some US stuff, but most ofit was China and Philippines.

So so you were gathering the COO from invoices.
In my experience, the COO isprinted on just the PDF invoice
you get from
Them. But do you do you have away of extracting that? So you
can automate

Yeah. I wrote a I wrote a Python interpreter to
take the PDF, digitize it, andthen it most of the PDFs are
searchable, so it's greatbecause Yeah. That's so it's
easy to convert to text. Youdon't have to OCR it. Right.
You just have to read the textout of it. And so and I took
that out, and the problem isover time, the the invoices

(07:27):
change. Yeah. And so I basicallyhad to make a couple different
structures to strip out the theCOO and HTS correctly. Mhmm.

I I that would be really curious to know. Well, so
so you saw, what, 1.7 percentchange? Was that what it was?

Yeah. 1.72%.

Okay. 1.72% change increase in bomb price,
which that doesn't even if we'retalking about American currency,
that doesn't even keep up withinflation. Right?

Yeah.

So the it would be really interesting to see
what percentage of bombs havechanged. Are are like, are they
actually reducing That'sactually the thing

I wanna do next. What's, like, complete I
have 10 years worth
of stuff to do.

You have a lot of data.

And so I have a lot of data to crunch into this
thing. And I actually gonna talkto, a couple of our our
developers and be like, hey.Because I've never done data on
this scale, and I wanna be like,hey. What's the best way for me
to store this data? Like,anywhere.
Like Right. If it's on mycomputer, what's the best

(08:40):
structure for it? Because rightnow, it's like a big old, like,
Python dictionary.

So that could get real big real fast.

Yeah. And I'm just doing, like, old school,
like, if I have to save it, itjust gets it's called pickled.
I'm I'm just pickling up jarringup the the data Right. To a text
file, which is not the best alsobecause searching that is kinda
slow. Mhmm.
So there's gotta be a better waydatabase for me to learn.

Yeah. You're getting into date database
management, basically.

Yeah. So I wanna I wanna combine that data
and because one thing I'm alsorecording is the price that we
paid as well per unit.
Mhmm.
And it could be interesting from, like, a
historical perspective to seehow prices have changed too. But
I'm mostly interested in howhave engineers changed their

(09:34):
component picking. That's whatI'm more interested in.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That, that would be really
fascinating. In fact, some it'ssomething that that that's fun.
So so earlier today, I wasworking on a on a small project.
It's nothing particularlyspectacular, but it's something
I haven't done in a in about ayear or so is work on something
smaller like this mainly becauseI've just been devoting a lot of

(09:58):
my time to my my job. And beinga component engineer in
aerospace has changed my outlookon parts quite a bit. And I'm
not gonna say it necessarily forthe positive because when it
comes down to your your jellybean parts like r's and c's and

(10:19):
and things of that sort. In theaerospace industry, there's
there's there's sort of amindset of the the cost doesn't
matter.
The difference between a 10¢resistor and a $1 resistor is so
minuscule that you don't evenask the question about that.
Because, you know, we're notbuilding, you know, 10,000
units. We're building 10. And sohaving a a resistor cost a

(10:42):
dollar versus 10¢ meansvirtually nothing. So when it
comes down to smaller parts, thethe cost is just outweighed by
whatever the performance is.
You just you pick whichever oneand you don't ask questions and
you just move on. Whereas withprevious jobs, I had to pay
attention to the cost of everylittle thing because it does hit

(11:05):
your bottom line quite a bitmore. And so moving back to
doing this smaller project, Iwas actually picking some parts
earlier today and realized that,a a family of Panasonic
capacitors that I had been usingin the past, they're virtually
all of them are going last timeby or out of stock. And and the

(11:27):
price that was associated withthat particular type of
capacitor is being replaced witha newer capacitor that is 4 or 5
x the cost. And it seems to bethe exact same part.
So it seems to be it's not likethey're just raising the price
on this part. They're justobsoleting it, introducing this

(11:48):
new one that is significantlymore expensive. And I I it's
it's a little shocking justbecause, like I said, I haven't
really been paying attention tocost as much as I had in the
past until today. And I'm I'mI'm concerned that that might be
a trend that we see goingforward because a a 4, 5 x cost

(12:11):
on something that's thesecapacitors were not the cheapest
thing to begin with, but a 4 5 xcost could really hurt the
bottom line quite a bit.

Mhmm. So

yeah. I am curious to see this. I would,
you know, if you have something,like, maybe even once a quarter
or something like that wherethere's an update on this, I
would love to see that. That'sthat's some really cool data.
And you're in a really uniqueplace because you work at a
place that has all the dataavailable, but this isn't

(12:44):
necessarily a thing thatMacrofab is.
We're not you're not itching todo this.

Yeah. We're not a we're not a we're not a data
broker. We don't we we ourbusiness is building boards for
people, not, like, collecting orselling data or anything like
that. Right. So doing this kindlike, we've done dude we've done
data analysis on stuff before tofigure out, like, what kind of

(13:11):
features we should add next tothe product.
Right? But we haven't been, likewe haven't used our data to to
make market trends. Haven't donethat before. And so that's why
I'm I'm like, we collect allthis HTS codes and stuff just so
that when we go and ship, let'ssay, it gets built onto a board,
so we know what HTS codes applyto the board when it gets

(13:34):
shipped internationally, forexample.

Yeah.

Or to know, oh, this HTS code falls under, you
know was it year 99 or whateverit is? Yeah. Oh, so then we
gotta make sure that this, like,this part can't get put on a
board. It's gonna go to aparticular country. That kind of
stuff.
That's why those that stuff'scollected. Not because we are,

(13:58):
you know, trying to analyzethat. So this is the first time
we've been trying to I've beentrying to at least doing it, and
all the data is kinda like, it'snot centralized because it's not
it was never designed to be forthis kind of stuff. So

You you know what? They've really cool. God.
This this would add we'refeature creep in here, here, but
but but follow me on this. It'dbe really cool.
Let's just pick on capacitorsbecause we were just talking
about them. You have 10 yearsworth of data of buying loads of
capacitors. Right? You've boughttons of capacitors. It would be
cool to see a chart over thelast 10 years of average

(14:31):
capacitor price.
Obviously, the the spread isgonna be really wide on that,
but but I guess if you averagethat many that you've bought,
you probably get a fairly decentnumber. But but an average price
and show the rate of increase incost of what capacitors do
across the decade. And thencompare that to other component

(14:52):
types and what componentincreases the most in price over
a decade?

Yeah. So right now, I'm doing basically my for
my because my data structure isvery simple because I'm like,
Misha, our CEO, basically waslike, Parker, this is on
Wednesday last week. I was like,Parker, you should write a blog
article about the tariffs. Andhe and I'm like, cool. Yeah.
I can do that. And he's like,you should have it done by

(15:20):
Friday. And I'm like, as I'vealready thought of exactly what
I wanted to write before givingthe getting the due date

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And I'm like, oh, I thought because I was
like, oh, I'm gonna be like, I'mgonna get the HTS codes. I'm
gonna collect all this data, andI'm gonna analyze what the bill
material average cost is gonnabe so we actually know what the
impact for our customers isgonna be. Great article. And I'm
like, yeah. It's gonna take meprobably, like, in my brand,
like, oh, it'll probably take meabout a week or so to get all
that data to in a form that I'dbe happy with.

(15:50):
And then he's like, Friday, andI'm like, shit. So I did my best
to get that one. Because that1.72% might change. I think that
is a good it was at trending inthat spot. So I'm like Well

and and and that's that's the number. You
you you came to the number thatpeople actually care about.
Like, how much are these tariffsactually impacting me? Yeah. And
and and you're right.
Maybe that number changes, butit's probably not gonna go from
1.7 to 20% unless you made anegregious error, which you
probably didn't. So so yeah.Call it 2%. Whatever. It still

(16:27):
doesn't matter.
But but, yeah, that's the numberthat that people really care
about. All the rest of thosenumbers, like, what I was
talking about trending things ismore a curiosity out out of
anything else.

I wanna see my my the thing I wanna see the
most is out of this trend datais, is there a trend in point 1
microfarad capacitors in termsof part numbers?

I I I wonder if you could trend the capacitor
shortage back in, what, 2018 orwhatever?

Yeah. 2018.

It was the is there, like, a notch in your
data?

Probably. Yeah. Yeah. It's I gotta talk I gotta
talk to some of the developers.Dan Holm is one of our our
leads, and I'll probably talk tohim and be like, k.
I wanna set up this database.Kirk's back to us in my
structure right now is the toplevel is the part number.
Mhmm.
And then and then under that are the each
invoice that part number fallsunder. So under that invoice, it

(17:30):
has so let's say this in it hasa date, it has the COO, it has
how much we paid for that part,has the quantity, basically, all
the metadata of from thatinvoice. Because, like, we
bought parts multiple times overthe years, so I wanted to get
that trend data that way.Because what if a COO changes
over time? Because that canhappen.

(17:51):
So that's the stuff I wanna knowis that'd be really cool. Like,
overall components, which onehas changed COO the most?

How do you even track that, though? Because
invoices. You're you're you'rewell, but you're not necessarily
tracking. You're just seeing,like, the impact of purchasing
things.

Well, no.

I mean, how

I can see if if if part numbers changed a COO,
it'll pop up in the data.

Well, I but but but my argument is, you know, a
lot of a lot of manufacturersshare the same part number. So
how do you know, like, how areyou actually tracking the
correct part number?

It's the manufacturer part number. Okay.
That's what I'm tracking. I'mtracking the MPNs. Now,
technically, that's in incorrectbecause we we have in internally
at, we have what's called Idon't know what they call it,
but it's a combination of theMPN and the manufacturer.
Because there are some MPNs thatare the same.

Right. There's transistors where you can get
the same flavor

from Yes.

10 different guys.

Yeah. So I need what I need to do is basically I
need to restructure and go offwas, like, the combine, which is
basically manufacturer and thepart number.

Yeah.

I it's like part ID or something like that,
and our system I can't rememberwhat it's called.

See that? Yeah. That was my argument. Tracking
those is difficult. There'sothers where there's one
manufacturer, so tracking that'seasy.

Right? Yes. So I need to I need to go to that
method, which is getting thepart ID, basically. Because it
what I would love to do I don'tknow if it's ever gonna happen
or if we can even do this. Idon't know.
But I'd love if because we dohave a part searching in our
platform, and I'd love to oneactually just have because right

(19:35):
now you have to be in, like, thebuild material to look for
parts, which is fine. That'swhere you go clicking to say you
want that part on your board.But I love it. It was like its
own thing so you could justsearch for parts in our platform
without having to associate withthe board. And if it if we could
show, you know, the historicaldata about pricing about it,

(19:58):
maybe I don't know if we if wecan get, like, stock values,
like, quantity over time, like,vendors have.
I don't know if we can get that.I know we have we can get that
from our data sources, but Idon't know if we can publish
that. There's that's someoneelse's data, and we can't
publish that. Right. Yeah.

(20:19):
Or store no. We can't I think wecan publish it, but we can't
store it. So we can't use it forhistorical reasons. That's how
that works. Try to remember.
It's been a long time since I'velooked at all that stuff. But
what I'd love to be able to dois surface like like you search
for a part and you go, hey. Thelast time we ordered this part

(20:41):
since we order we ordered thispart before, last time it was
COO this, and just be like,previously known COO and just
says that.

Yeah.

The the only I think there's only one vendor I
know of that actually says whatthe COO is, and that's Arrow.
Arrow will actually tell youwhat the country of origin of
what their stock is. Everyoneelse, I think, doesn't show that
because it can change. Yeah.

It would be really cool to see historical
trends of the pricing of thatpart.

Yeah. Well, it'd be very interesting,
actually, the trend in thepricing at and pick were, like,
where the first tariffs wentinto play. Remember that?
Yeah.
And saying, hey. Did Chinese parts go up in
price by the 25%, or did or did,you know, all parts go up in

(21:35):
that price? That amount ofmoney? Like, did did parts in
Malaysia become more competitivein pricing?

Does Aero Displaysio o yeah. No lie. Okay.
Sorry.

Yeah. It's right there where you go type
the quantity. Yeah. Yeah. Theyshow you the lot numbers there
too sometimes.
That's It's really nice. Ireally wish, more vendors did
that.

Yeah. I wonder I wonder if there's a reason why
they don't do that.

I don't know.

There has there has to be a good reason because
I don't think that vendors are,you know, trying to skirt data
or give you less data. More isgenerally better with this.
Although although I I am lookingat an arrow page for I don't
know. What is this part? It's acomparator.
And they put a boatload of dataon the on the web page, which I

(22:30):
I've talked to some people at atDigi Key about how they actually
go and scrub PDFs and get dataup onto the website, and it it
is not a small task for them todo that. In fact, the last time
I heard, I think it was Digi Keyhas a team of over 200 people
working full time

of just

just getting data of parts onto the website. And
to see Arrow have this much dataI mean, we're talking about for
this comparator just I don'tknow. Let me pull something up.
Maximum input offset voltage inmillivolts. They they call it 7
volts at 5 right.
7 millivolts at 5.5 volts. So sosomeone had to go into the data

(23:13):
sheet and actually scrub all ofthat out, which maybe that
wasn't a a particularly goodexample, but all I'm saying is
there's a lot of data in here.So for them to also put country
of origin, it's just one morestep that somebody has to go and
do. What's interesting is I Iactually talked to someone about
getting data onto Digi Key, andand and my one of my first

(23:34):
suggestions was why doesn't DigiKey just make it or and maybe
not Digi Key, anyone. Why do whydoesn't any of the big vendors
make it such that themanufacturer goes on and says,
hey.
I wanna sell my part here, so Iwill put the data on it.
Because, hey, who knows the databest, but the manufacturer
actually does it. And and thisthis person was like, you would
be surprised how hard it is toget them to care about putting

(23:58):
the data up there on on ourwebsite. So they did they
stopped trying. They stoppedasking the manufacturers to be
like, hey.
Will you fill this out? Eventhough that that makes the most
sense, right, to say, hey. Youwanna sell your whizbang IC on
there. We'll happily sell it foryou. Put this data up there.
He's like, no. It was actuallyhard to get get involvement in

(24:19):
that. So that's why they have ateam of 200 full time employees
doing that. Scrubbing data.Yeah.
Which you are a full timeemployee doing it for macro.

I'm not doing it full time. But I I I wanna
see if we can figure out how doI I need to talk to, like,
higher ups about I think I needto build, like, good proof of
concepts. I'd love to be able tomake this dump this data more
available to our customers. Moreautomated for sure. Yeah.
Well, the automation's not, I'veactually got most of it

(24:54):
automated. Like, it kinda justdoes its thing. It doesn't I
don't have to really do much toit.

Well, I mean, the automate automation as in like,
you were mentioning, if if if acustomer goes and clicks on a on
a part

Oh, yes. Then it

automatically shows historical data about

that. I don't I just don't know, like like,
there might be a reason whyMauser and Digi Key don't show
the COO, and there's somethingI'm not thinking about.

Yeah. Right. Right.

So I I just don't know. But I am going to
start making reports becauseactually it was a lot of fun
writing that article. So I wannado more trends.

Yeah. And

then I have the 19 fifties. Trends in
engineering.
Look to my Michael fan. I think See the
wonders about blowing your PCBnow.

You you should totally make a little bumper
reel for these,

it's like Mac holding up the so we have a we
actually have a a unofficialmascot at Macra Fab called Mac.

Yeah.

And he's a little p little little cartoon
character that's shaped like aPCB. Having Mac hold up, like,
the world and, like, the m logois, like, spinning around it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Doing, like, an old oldradio broadcast with the
xylophones going on in thebackground.

It's like Yeah.

Statistical analysis from Macrofab.

I like it.

That'd be really fun. They all all of this has to
make sense for you to do,though.

Yes. Exactly.

At the end of the day, Macofab is a business. You
can't just get data and be like,that's cool. It has to actually
it has to go towards something.

Yeah. And then that's why we we don't make our
business isn't to look atcomponent historical historical
trends.

Correct.

But I'd like I think we could since I'm in
marketing full time now, I thinkI could pitch that as, hey. I
wanna do a blog article everymonth about trends, you know,
about different components andthat kind of stuff. And that
way, at least I can build that.Now does that make it so it's
publicly available to ourcustomers? That's a different

(27:11):
story on that.

Well, it and it's really cool to see what the
impact of the tariffs were. Imean, I know you and I talked
about the tear the the firstround of tariffs years ago. We
talked about them probably on 3or 4 episodes. We even had a
full episode dedicated to them.Mhmm.
And, and I'm I'm sure there wasa a a lot of predictions that we
did with them, but now we'reactually seeing the impact,

(27:37):
like, day to day impact of them.And and we're obviously looking
purely at the electronicsindustry and PCA assembly.
Right?

A 100%.

And not even just The tariffs were way bigger than
that.

And not even assembly, just the parts.

Well, yeah. The parts PCB is included as a part.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, if I get further on that
project, I'll let everyone inthe podcast sphere know.

Yeah. That's pretty cool.

Till next time on the Baccarat Fab Engineering
podcast.

I love it.

Alright. So we have a news article that I found
this morning. So similar vein oftariffs, but not tariffs. This
article is titled ASML and TSMCcan disable chip machines if
China invades Taiwan. And thisis a Yahoo link finance Yahoo

(28:36):
link.
It's like a article about ainterview that ASML and TSMC
gave, I think, like, the Denmarkgovernment, if I recall.

I think I think a bit of the machines that are
used at t m TSMC are designed inDenmark.

Yeah. That's the the ASML company builds I
think they're the sole providerof basically these high end
machines, and they're based inDenmark.
Mhmm.
But The

the the l in ASML is lithography. They they
produce the lithographymachines.

Yes. But it's ASML is like A and M now.

Wait. What? How so?

ASML actually doesn't stand for anything.

Oh,

yeah. It used to stand for, like, advanced I
actually wrote this down, hon.It stands for advanced
semiconductor materialslithography. Yeah. And sometime
in their span, they just made itit doesn't actually stand for
anything anymore.
It just stands for ASML. It'sjust ASML.

Okay.

Like a and m Texas A&M University used to be
agricultural and mechanical, andnow it's just a ATM is just ATM,
the logo. A and M.

Yeah. Right.

Yeah. It's just A and M.

Well and there's a lot of schools that are A and
M.

Yes. Yeah. But I'm saying it used to stand for
something, and they were like,well, we're more than
agricultural and manufacturing,so we would just be called A&M
because that's our trademark.

Right.

Right.
Yeah. Right. Right. Same thing. Everyone's
just like, college is weird.
College football, at least.

I guess I guess you your college that makes a
lot more sense. Just it's justUniversity of Texas. It's just
an umbrella term. It's justalways gonna be University of
Texas.

Yeah. Well, they always have to they have to
do, like, at where now? Becausethere's so many other University
of Texas's that are under thatumbrella.

Oh, right.

Like, there's at Austin. There's at, San
Antonio. There's at Dallas.There's there's actually one
Houston as well. There's atHouston.

There's a UT Houston?

Mhmm.

Oh, I didn't know that. Is it part of the UT
family? Mhmm.

Yeah. Small small satellite school. It's
like A and M's got one down inGalveston.

A and M actually okay. So my A and M has 3
branches or 3 other campuses orI'm sorry. Three campuses in
total. It has the CollegeStation 1, that's Galveston, and
it has Qatar overseas. Everyother A and M is not associated
with Texas A and M.
Yeah.

But no. Isn't there one in Corpus that is?

No. I think it's just those 3.

The guitar one's weird. It is. Did we ever
talk about that on the podcast?

I don't think so.

Maybe I don't think we ever. I was reading up
about that a couple of monthswhen that popped up about 6
months ago.

And I I think the majority of it is for petroleum
engineering.

It's petroleum engineering, but it's this this
gets a little conspiracy aboutthis. So warning everyone
Oh, it's

gonna be juicy.

Is well, a and m, Texas a and m, actually, is
one of the better or one of thebest nuclear energy programs and
all that research.

Mhmm. I didn't know that.

Yeah. And so when this Qatar this is the
whole thing with the Qatar thingis they get that government has
access to that research.

Okay.

That's the conspiracy theory stuff.

Oh, okay. I I was like, where's the conspiracy
here?

Well, it's giving another country access to
that kind of research. Is that agood thing or bad thing? Got it.
Alright. Make your own decisionsabout that because it's been a
long time since I've read upabout it, and I'm probably
uneducated about that topicright now.

Yeah. I have no idea. In fact, even going even
when I was at school, I had noidea what the Qatar school was
even doing other than I thinkpetroleum engineering.

Yeah. I think that's what it's that's the what
it's billed as, but it does haveaccess. Anyways, if you're
interested about that, go Googlethe Copic. There's a lot of
articles about it. Is that agood thing that a US our US tax
dollars going to a country.

(33:29):
Well, I you know what? No. I'mnot gonna talk about that. We've
talked about a couple 2

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let I'll we should probably get
back to ASML and TSMC.

Yes. Let's do that. So what this whole
interview was about was ASML andTSMC basically guaranteeing that
if there was an invasion ofTaiwan, that they could just
turn off the machines that arebuilding all these fancy chips.
So basically making thesefactories useless as factories

(34:03):
because you couldn't put they'rethe only company that makes
these these machines and theseadvanced machines. So so that so
what's what I wanna talk aboutthere is

more of

what does that mean, though? Like, just remote
and they also were saying, like,yeah. We can even turn off the
machines in China because Chinahas some of these machines. They
don't have the more advancedones like TSMC has, but they
have some fairly ad I mean, allthese machines are crazy
advanced. Right?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well and and ASML started
reducing, if not completelyclosing off all shipment of
machines to China not that longago.

Correct.

That's one of the reasons why they don't have the
really high end machines.

Yes. And so the first thing that kinda was in my
mind is, is it ethical toremotely shut down critical
manufacturing equipments likethis?

Well, at the so the only now here's the thing.
Is it ethical to shut it downdepends entirely upon the reason
for shutting it down. Right?

That's true.

So is it okay. This actually goes into some
other stuff we've talked aboutin the past with, like, Ford
implementing some potentialoptions for putting your truck
in limp mode if you miss apayment or even having self
driving cars return themselvesto the dealership if you if you

(35:41):
miss a payment.

Auto repo. Auto repo.

Right. Right. Right. Right. Is it you know, is
that ethical?
You know, perhaps. I'm notentirely sure. But the idea that
if somebody who is a potentialbad actor on the world stage
invades a country with theexpress intent of capturing this
manufacturing capabilities, isit unethical to remotely remove

(36:10):
those those capabilities? Youknow, I'm not sure. My my gut
feeling says yes or I'm sorry.
No. It's not unethical. Yes.That is an acceptable action.
Although, I don't like the ideaof giving someone else power
over my property from, you know,thousands of miles away.

(36:31):
Now, of course, that's somewhatgoofy because we don't
necessarily have that luxuryanymore there's so many things
that I guarantee you somebodycould do something with a a
large portion of my electronicsthat I own from from where you
know, remotely. So it'sdifficult, but I would say no. I

(36:56):
don't think that's unethical.

I think what's more I I I kind of agree. It
depends on the reason. What Ithink is more concerning is that
they put in a backdoor to beable to disable it remotely.

Yeah. Well and and and the thing is they put in
that backdoor, I think, for thisexact purpose. The I don't think
they were putting in a backdoorfor just like, I was suggesting,
like, you miss a payment, andthey shut it off. I don't think
they were putting a backdoor forthose kind of purposes. I
literally think they were theythey put this in for the express
purpose of shutting it off dueto invasion or war.

Yeah. And I do agree that with that. It's the
the stories that float around onthe Internet, I don't know how
true these are, but there arestories on the Internet of a
factory just, like, moving thisa high end CNC machine and then
having to have a that companycome out and unlock it because
the GPS determined it moved. Andso it, like, locked itself down.

Right. Right. That I don't know. That that
seems a little. What's thepurpose of that?
Why why is that necessary?

Well, I think it's because there are some
machines. It's like ITARcontrols. Let's say you were
building a machine that or oryou have a machine oh, man. What
would be a good example of itbuilding this? Because, like,
you can go on the way and be,like, a machine that builds
nukes, which

(38:27):
would be a lot

of stuff. I I was just oh, a centrifuge is the,
like

yeah. That what's more generic? But if you
were a company that wasdesigning the centrifuge that
enriched uranium.

Correct. Yeah. You you you would track the hell
out of those things.

Yeah. Where that went. Right.

Right. So so but but but but just a generic CNC
that can be used for doingwhatever task shutting that
down, I don't understand thereasoning behind that.

I wonder if there are some machines, depends
on the CNC machine, I guess,that is ITAR controlled.

Yeah. Yeah. It It

could be the data on that machine's ITAR
controlled. Well, it yeah. Icould see.

It it depends on if you store your files on the
machine itself. And then forsure, the machine would get
locked down. Well, really thecomputer does in the machine.
Right? But, yeah, unless you cancontrol if that data has been
properly handled or not, thenabsolutely that makes sense.
But the machine itself doesn't.

Yeah. I'm

wondering It all depends on how generic or
specific the machine is. Becauseeven okay. Even if you have some
super whizbang IC machine, ifyou're making if you're making
controllers for toasters thathave a bagel pin on it, it
doesn't necessarily matter wherethat goes. Right? Do you care

(39:54):
too much if it gets invaded andthey make bagel pin ICs?
It's it's it's much more aboutdata control.

What if what if you had what if you had the I
mean, those so those they'rejust timers. Those big old
controller. I actually have aPDF of 1. I'm trying to build a
board around 1 right now.

Are you really?

Yeah. I actually I'm reading the article
about CNC machines and ITAR. Ithink it's just the data on
them.

Yeah. No. It has to be. Yeah. Because c and c's
machines don't have historyunless it's just data.
Right.

Yeah. I guess so. Yeah. I wonder I wonder if
that's a old I wonder if thatCNC machine moving in the shop
and having to be unlocked is aold wives tale, or it was it
detected it moved, like, itshifted, and it was waiting to
be recalibrated, which I cantotally see. Because, like, when

(40:58):
we move our machines

You're required to have the manufacturer come
out.

Yeah. We have to have the if we move our
machines, the manufacturer hasto come out and reset up the
machine to make sure it'scalibrated and flat because of
how fast they move. And if it'sslightly off, they won't cover,
like, damage from the gantriesand stuff.

And they don't expect you to have the
wherewithal or the the know how,I should say, to be able to do
that. Correct.

And so I could just see it just being, like,
the CNC machine just has thatcapability to know if it moved
built in. Our machines don'tknow. You could pick them up and
drop move them around, and youcould fire them back up, but we
always wait for them to show upthe calibrator because that's
what you should do.

Right.

Right. Right. But I could I can totally see
just putting a littleaccelerometer in there, and if
it knows that it exceeded acertain g rating of moving that,
hey. I moved. I probablyshouldn't do anything until I've
been recalibrated.
I wonder if that's an old wivesor old old engineering tale of
CNC machines.

Yeah. I I bet I bet you were missing something
here. There's probably somethingmore to that, or maybe that is
something that you agreed withthe manufacturer about. So, you
know, if that's built into yourcontract about, hey, if this
ever moves, I will contact youor whatever. And then if you
move it and it doesn't, and youdon't contact them, then they

(42:26):
shut it down.
Sure. If that's in the contract,that's in the contract. Right?

Yeah.

So, yeah, there there may be something that
we're missing here. However, thethe fundamentals of what a CNC
does doesn't make it nationalsecurity if you move it. Right?

Well, the idea would be it got moved somewhere
else like China or or Mexico orsomething like that where it
shouldn't be. Because let's sayit's access controlled or
restricted for shipment.

Right.

And, you

know, I wonder perhaps there's also some
legality from the manufacturerif their thing lands in a
particular place. So they justneed to know because they can
get in trouble even if the enduser is the one who's moving it.
I guess so. So as always, thesethings are probably far more
complex than than we have anyidea about. But on the surface,

(43:19):
it does feel kind of odd.
Right? So I could totally okay.I can absolutely understand. We
have not just American. There'sso many countries that use TSMC
for building ICs that go intotheir their military devices,
into a lot of really high-techstuff that we need to be and

(43:43):
need to have kept secret.
And so I'm sure data control isof utmost importance with these
machines. So the idea of beingable to remotely shut them off
in the event that there is anissue is in the interest of many
countries.

Mhmm.

So I get why they would build that in there. In
fact, I wouldn't be surprised ifthe fact that ASML is building
that in is a request from the USbefore it gets shipped to those
those countries. It it wouldn'tit wouldn't surprise me if in a
contract when when the US writesa contract to build a particular

(44:25):
type of IC for something, Thatcontract says this this machine
that this thing is built on mustbe able to be disabled. Like,
those that kind of language isis not unheard of in in in
defense and aerospace.

But I'm I'm more worried about now is they
put in this this backdoor. Is

They can be abused?

They're doors. People will find doors.

They're doors. True. True.

It's it's one of those it's it's kinda like
the back or not backdoor, butthe remote access, like, what
Ford was is looking at doing.But why old companies are are
looking at doing that. It's notjust Ford. It's, you know, what
if another bad actor got finallygot a hold of that portal or
that that WebSocket or I we wehave no idea how it actually

(45:23):
gets disabled. Right?
They didn't go into that. Like,it could be disabled by them
dropping a bomb on the factory.

They they call them up and say, hey, go press
the disable button on themachine.

Yeah. Yeah. That could be it.

It really could be.

Yeah. Oh, man. It's there was a when I hear
this story hopefully, I'm notmaking this up, but there was I
remember a laptop that had ithad the hard drive in the lid
with an x on it and so you couldshoot it and blow up the hard or

(46:04):
and damage the hard drive.

Oh, just punch a hole right through it?

Yeah. What I wonder if I'm making that up.

I mean, that sounds fantastical, but

It sounds like super double 0 7.

Yeah. If if that's real, that's kind of
awesome, actually.

That that's what it reminds me of. You get
you get the call, and you justhuck a monkey wrench into into
the machine.

I gotta I gotta look this up now, because that
sounds really cool.

I I wish I hope I didn't just make that up a
long time ago, because it feelslike I'm recalling that from a
story I I heard. I'm asking I'masking Chat gpt the same
question.

Is chat gpt the new version of Googling? I I I
guess.

It is. Yeah. I think it works much it works
better for me at least.

It only gives you one answer, whereas Google gives
you a gazillion.

Oh, Chat GPT thinks it's an urban legend.

Oh, well, but that's still pretty cool,
though.

Maybe it wasn't a movie I saw.

Shoot here to destroy information?

Yeah. It was just like an x on the laptop,
and that's where you wouldshoot, and they would disable
the lap disable the hard drive.

I like that. That's pretty cool.

Yeah. So we don't know what this backdoor is
for these machines at all.They're on purposely not telling
us a lot of information.

And the the okay. So the purpose of disabling the
machine isn't necessarily tokeep the technology of the
machine from falling into aninvasion country's hands or or
the country that is invadingtheir hands. It's to disable the
machine from functioning suchthat it just basically becomes a

(47:51):
brick and to potentially eitherdestroy or prevent any gathering
of data that is on the machine.

Now they're they imply they can also just
shut down these machineswherever they're at too, which
means if it's kinda likemutually assured destruction of
your semiconductor industry. Ifyou invade Taiwan, we're gonna
shut down all the machines inTaiwan and in China.

True. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So imagine right now if if China didn't
know about this beforehand,which they probably did, they're
probably trying to figure outhow they are gonna shut it down.
Because that's upwards where ifsomeone came to me and was like,
so you know you're a reallyawesome 3 d printer, well,
bamboo could just shut that downwhenever they want. I would be,

(48:43):
like, figuring out how to makesure they couldn't do that.
Right. Right.
That would be my first thing.

What is the the method? Because, I mean, this
has just gotta be a networkconnected machine. Right? That
Yeah.

But then you would just air box or air air
block it, and then it's fine.It's was it wireless then? Well,
that'd be kind of a crazysignal, and you could just, you
know, jam it or put it in aFaraday that'd be a big Faraday
cage, but you could totally doit that way. So but they because
they said we guarantee we canshut it down.

That's And that's why I was thinking they just
call them and say press thedisable button.

Well, that wouldn't work for in China
though.
Right.
Right. Right. So that that's the interesting
is what method is it? And I waschatting with some of my my
friends, and they're like, well,that's cheaper than what what's
it the what was the hypotheticalweapon Stalin's fist or the rods

(49:42):
of God?

Yeah. Rods of God. They just shoot it from
space.

It's a tungsten telephone pole that spun up and
just dropped from orbit.

Yep. Yep.

So there was this got into, like,
hypotheticals is so Starlinknetwork. Right?
Mhmm.
How many satellites have I got? A lot.
Let

me look.

Yeah. How many salads I got? What if this is
like me being like a double oseven evil villain right now. Is
you put a 10 pound tungsten ballon every Starlink. Then you have
then you have the shotgun ofgod.

The shotgun

of god.
The rods of god? Yeah. The shotgun of god.
It just drops these littlepellets.

Oh my god. So so as of 2024, there's 58100
Starlink satellites, whichwhich, by the way, due to the
apparently, they are stable, butthey've been seeing some
effects, let's just say, due tothe more recent solar activity.

Mhmm.

So the sun's barfing out a bunch of extra
radiation right now. And, ElonMusk came out saying that they
are functioning, but they've haddecreased functionality. I I'm
I'm paraphrasing there, but itdoesn't sound like they're going
down, but it is affecting them.

And and those those satellites are designed to
break up really well underreentry because they're they're
they're short term livedsatellites.
Right.

They're

they're put in really low earth orbit, really
low.

Yeah.

And so they only last a couple years, if
that's. So putting in tungstenballs goes against that idea,
but you could turn it into thiscrazy you can drop a tungsten
ball on one specific buildingfrom orbit. But you could just
launch a cruise missile and dothe same thing. So it's like,

(51:44):
why would you even go throughthat effort?

Wikipedia calls that kind of an attack a kinetic
bombardment. I I like

that. Kinetic bombardment. Yeah.

Feels a little more scientific than space
shotgun.

Space shotgun. I don't know. It's interesting.
I kinda wanna know more aboutwhat kind of backdoor it is.

Yeah. Like, how it actually gets executed.

Yep. I don't know. If it's just a network
connection, then that's supereasy to to defeat.

I'm I'm curious the community's thoughts if if
if this is the kind of thingthat you think is a good thing
to have in in the machinery atTSMC or if this is something
that you really feel like, nah,should not exist whatsoever. If
you purchase a machine, it's upto you to handle everything,
including an invasion.

Yeah. And or it could be also like a dead man
switch where if you sever theconnection, it it stops working.

Oh, that could yeah. Okay. That could work too.

Yeah.

Because if it was a network thing and there's an
invasion and they just killpower to everything, then your
backdoor is gone. Right?

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. It's interesting stuff.
Yeah.
Let us know what you think aboutthis because it's this, this
start oh, this starts gettingthe right to repair as well.

Well, that's that's sort of the the Ford
thing and actually even more, Iwas thinking John Deere earlier
where right to repair has beenkind of a, a difficult topic.

Yeah. So this this is starting to get into is
it ethical for this kind oftechnology to exist in stuff you
own and affecting right torepair? Because if they can
remotely turn off let's say, youbought the you bought the you
bought a a a Google Pixel phone,and my phone is not listening to

(53:54):
me right now.

Yep. It's actually listening to you.

Yeah. When I lost my train of thought because
of that stupid thing. Oh, andthey come out with the new you
buy a version couple years downtheir own, they come out in
well, a couple years is isgenerous. The next year, they
come out with the new version,and they go, oh, we're just
gonna disable all these oldphones now because of the old

(54:20):
version, and they have securityissues.

Well, yeah, you're presenting it as a
nefarious thing or or or they'rethey're they're they're
presenting it as a nefariousthing. But yeah. Yeah. Right.
Now you're starting to get moreinto the do you own that?
Do you own every asset thatbreaks it? Yeah. Yeah.

Do you own that car if it could repo itself?

Well, if you're not done with payments on it, do
you own it? Like, I I think it'sfunny when people ask the
question, do you or do you rentor do you own a house? The
answer for me is I I'm I own myhouse, but I'm still paying it
off. So, no, I don't own myhouse. Right?

I think it depends on it is so when
something happens on thatproperty, whose fault is it?

Yeah. Yeah.

It's not the banks. It's your fault. Whereas
if something if you're rentingand something happens on that
property, it can be the landlordwho owns the property's

fault. Well, when I I'm using air quotes here.
When I bought my house, somebodygot the money for this house and
the entirety of the money ofthis house. So this house was
purchased at some point in time,probably multiple times with the
house I live in. But it so so sowhen I went to buy it, a

(55:48):
transaction was completed andthe money was transferred.
Now I am subject to paying offmy house to someone else than
than that. But so so do I own myhouse? It depends on who you ask
and it depends on how it's beingasked. Like I said, you know,

(56:08):
the the differentiation betweenwhen we say renting versus
owning very much means somethingeven though, technically, both
people are still payingsomething off.

Sure. A good question is if your air
conditioner breaks, who pays forit?

Well right. I mean but but but but depending
on where you rent, you'reresponsible for different
things. Yes. Some some placeswhen you went, you still are in
charge of the the maintenance ofthings.

That's like a lease. Well, for cars at least
is like that.

Yeah. Now we're getting off in the weeds.

Now we're getting way off topic.

Well, let us know what what you think about this
topic. Do you think a backdoorin machinery that could
potentially have security issuesif an invasion were to happen.
If you think that is ethical ornonethical, let us know. What is
it? Forum.macfab.com.
Come and Could you imagine

could you imagine if there's an invasion
and then all those cheapChinese, like, 3 d printers
start printing I don't know whatthey would print that could hurt
you because it's just PLAplastic.

The the the single shot pistols. They just
all spin up.

Oh, actually, I could see I could see a
conspiracy of the cheap Chineseprinters that are connected to
the Internet, like, all turn onand start heating up and
catching fire.

Yeah. I guess I guess if you have a backdoor
that allows you to disable howmuch power you can push into the
heater

Yeah. Yeah. Slash the firmware.

Yeah. I guess so.

Yep. Anyways, let's let's leave. We're getting
hypotheticals that probablydon't exist.

We're way off. So

Okay. Sign us off?

Yeah. Thank you for listening to circuit break
from Macrofab. We were yourhost, Steven Craig.

And Parker Dohman.

Take it easy.

Breaker for downloading our podcast. Are you
as you like conspiracy theories?I think Steven and I like
conspiracy theories at leastcoming up with stupid ones. So
tell your friends and coworkersabout the conspiracy theories we
come up on circuit break thepodcast for macro fab or don't
because we want more people tolisten. I think it maybe we

(58:37):
should lean more into conspiracytheories.

Maybe we should have an episode about electrical
engineering conspiracy theories.Oh. Like, specific.

We need to get a guess for that.

Yes. We do. That'd be awesome.

So if you have a cool idea project or topic or
electrical engineeringconspiracy theory you want us to
discuss, let Steven and I andthe community of Breakers know
our community where you can findpersonal projects, discussion
about the podcast, andengineering topics and news. No
conspiracy theories yet, but wecan make an exception. It's

(59:10):
looking at forum.macfab.com.

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