Why would there be a dozen unrelated chip-fabricating facilities sitting idle in different corners of the world, when everyone lives in the same city, every group with shared interests carves out their own neighborhood, and there’s an overwhelming social norm to coordinate and standardize for increased efficiency? If there aren’t such factories, whoever tries to build one will attract the conspiracy’s attention during the permit-application process. If the factories exist but aren’t idle, newcomers will be competing with better-coordinated conspiracy members for production time before they can even test prototypes.
If an actual shutout fails, microtech in production seems like it would be absurdly easy to sabotage. Contaminate the raw materials, introduce a single-bit error into quality control so it rejects flawless chips and passes garbage, tweak the blueprints and/or assembly mechanisms so layers are misaligned, overheat it to denature the semiconductors. Overseer assesses the probability that a whole sequence of factory techs each made some grossly negligent or malicious mistake with this one model of chip, but no others before or since, concludes that the design itself is flawed.
Rapid iteration means the design is then thrown out, and the designers bluntly exhorted to either learn from those with a proven record (conspirators, all) or move on to some line of work that better suits their talents.
Why would there be a dozen unrelated chip-fabricating facilities sitting idle in different corners of the world, when everyone lives in the same city, every group with shared interests carves out their own neighborhood, and there’s an overwhelming social norm to coordinate and standardize for increased efficiency? If there aren’t such factories, whoever tries to build one will attract the conspiracy’s attention during the permit-application process. If the factories exist but aren’t idle, newcomers will be competing with better-coordinated conspiracy members for production time before they can even test prototypes.
If an actual shutout fails, microtech in production seems like it would be absurdly easy to sabotage. Contaminate the raw materials, introduce a single-bit error into quality control so it rejects flawless chips and passes garbage, tweak the blueprints and/or assembly mechanisms so layers are misaligned, overheat it to denature the semiconductors. Overseer assesses the probability that a whole sequence of factory techs each made some grossly negligent or malicious mistake with this one model of chip, but no others before or since, concludes that the design itself is flawed.
Rapid iteration means the design is then thrown out, and the designers bluntly exhorted to either learn from those with a proven record (conspirators, all) or move on to some line of work that better suits their talents.