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Semis and World Peace

Arthur Hanson

Well-known member
The semi/tech world has become so complex and geographically diverse when it comes to design, tooling, materials, and manufacturing that a major conflict involving just a significant portion of the world would not only bring progress to a halt but set us back generations. The complexity of the modern world has reached such a point the interdependence of business, social and governance structures are just as interdependent as the manufacturing sector. The semi/tech world combined with modern communications and shipping has made all countries more interdependent than ever with supply chains, marketing chains, regulatory chains all interdependent to such an extent if significantly interrupted all will suffer. All this has also made it much harder to keep secrets with news and online communities having the power to spread information and disinformation at ever greater speeds. There are no big secrets anymore, especially with so much satellite imagery available at our fingertips in real-time. The tech world has changed everything, including money flows and financial markets that are more interdependent than ever before due to advanced technologies.

The despots of the world had better take note of this, for in future conflicts the odds of losing on all sides have greatly increased and getting worse every day. This is probably the greatest dividend the tech sector and ecosystem have given us after the ability to speed progress in everything at an ever-accelerating rate. As the world advances, we are becoming more interdependent than ever before, raising the cost of conflict ever higher, while raising the return of cooperation and collaborations ever higher. Semiconductors in all their interations have changed the game and many haven't awakened to it at their own and others risk.

comments, expansions, and counters to this solicited and welcomed. Peace is too large a dividend to ignore.
 
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Humanity always loses during war - cold or hot.

However, I completely agree the risk of society 'not recovering' does get higher and higher as technology levels and interdependence increase. World War 1 and 2 were terrible, terrible conflicts -- and it took a generation for most of the world to recover; and some areas may never have really recovered.

The tech supply chain breaking really could bring world society to it's knees, especially given the size of our population vs. the available resources on the planet (which do not increase over time). Imagine we're finally making real progress on solving (or preventing it from getting worse) the climate crisis - then our advanced supply chain breaks down..
 
If the decision to go to war was taken from the perspective of the whole humanity, wars would be quite rare indeed. However, often countries found themselves in lose-lose situations that looked like prisoner's dilemma on steroids, and the incentives were such that escalation was inevitable. Interdependence definitely gives incentives against going to war, rationally speaking, but history shows that countries were often ok with screwing themselves as long as they hoped to screw the other side more.

On the other hand, whoever can stay out of a major war would definitely benefit by not being set back as much and this became more so with very interdependent economies. Perhaps this provides a strong enough incentive that everyone will want to stay out and then we'll have peace. I sure hope so.
 
Countries and companies should focus on being solutions-oriented with cost controls and strategy. The integration of a myriad of technologies has totally changed the game and is needed if we are going to survive the scourge of overpopulation that is crushing the ecosystem of the planet. I just hope the world can bring on technologies to cope before we further destroy the only planet we live on. The semiconductor world from nanoscale in AI/ML to new grid-level power storage is our only hope of buying time until we get our populations under control. Mankind now truly fits the definition of cancer by the uncontrolled growth in our only ecosystem. Using advanced technologies is the only answer to our survival for as we can see, the planet is now striking back in numerous ways. Advanced technologies to show us what the challenges are and ways to cope with them is now our only hope. Numerous plaques like covid and adverse weather conditions are just a very few of the ominous early signs of a changing ecosystem that is turning ever more hostile in defending itself against our abuse. I hope we choose solutions rather than waiting for the ecosystem to strike back like we have been doing.
 
Countries and companies should focus on being solutions-oriented with cost controls and strategy. The integration of a myriad of technologies has totally changed the game and is needed if we are going to survive the scourge of overpopulation that is crushing the ecosystem of the planet. I just hope the world can bring on technologies to cope before we further destroy the only planet we live on. The semiconductor world from nanoscale in AI/ML to new grid-level power storage is our only hope of buying time until we get our populations under control. Mankind now truly fits the definition of cancer by the uncontrolled growth in our only ecosystem. Using advanced technologies is the only answer to our survival for as we can see, the planet is now striking back in numerous ways. Advanced technologies to show us what the challenges are and ways to cope with them is now our only hope. Numerous plaques like covid and adverse weather conditions are just a very few of the ominous early signs of a changing ecosystem that is turning ever more hostile in defending itself against our abuse. I hope we choose solutions rather than waiting for the ecosystem to strike back like we have been doing.
I largely agree with your conclusions but my perspective is somewhat different. In my opinion, humanity is not separate from but is part of the ecosystem. Sure, we have unreasonable powers, but we are still part of Earth's biosphere and part of the evolutionary process that runs within it. The general rule "mess up your environment -- find yourself in a lot of pain" applies to us in spades. So it's our choice, whether to be the guardians of life on Earth and its ambassadors in the Universe or to be the parasite, or cancer, as you say. Only one of these leads to a future that I like, or perhaps to any kind of future at all. And from where we are now, we will need all the tech and all the wisdom to get there. I would also note that while the tech is certainly hard, the wisdom seems to be harder.
 
I largely agree with your conclusions but my perspective is somewhat different. In my opinion, humanity is not separate from but is part of the ecosystem. Sure, we have unreasonable powers, but we are still part of Earth's biosphere and part of the evolutionary process that runs within it. The general rule "mess up your environment -- find yourself in a lot of pain" applies to us in spades. So it's our choice, whether to be the guardians of life on Earth and its ambassadors in the Universe or to be the parasite, or cancer, as you say. Only one of these leads to a future that I like, or perhaps to any kind of future at all. And from where we are now, we will need all the tech and all the wisdom to get there. I would also note that while the tech is certainly hard, the wisdom seems to be harder.
I agree with you completely, but the crux of the problem as man now fits the definition of cancer on the planet and that is uncontrolled growth. We either have to dramatically cut our population, lifestyles or both and if we don't we could end up with a ravaged planet. Technology can help, but not enough or in time. Also our social structures have proven they cannot support the current population.
 
Most organisms would grow uncontrollably, given an opportunity. In the nature populations are limited by resources or predators. Humans are actually the first species that can limit itself even though it could grow more. Right now the population is shrinking in many developed countries (especially if you exclude immigration), and as more countries become developed the tendency spreads. So to me it seems that if we bring the progress that we enjoy in the West to the rest of the humanity, perhaps the population growth problem will solve itself.

Of course you could say that the level of consumption that we enjoy in the West times the current global population amounts to much worse environmental destruction than what we have already done. I would completely agree with this, we definitely need to up our sustainability game tremendously. Here I think both technology and behavior change will be necessary. And a lot of wisdom, yeah, wisdom is always in short supply ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
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