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