Semiconductor

Semi-conductors are Modernity's bottleneck. Everything uses them, phones, servers, AI models, cars. A factory costs 14 billion and takes five years to build. That factory becomes obsolete in 10 years. A company spending 14 billion needs scale. It must produce enough chips at high volumes to cover costs. Minimum economic scale is approximately $8 billion in annual revenue. Only three companies consistently hit that, Taiwan. Semi-conductor Manufacturing, Samsung, Intel. They control 85% of global advanced chip production. New entrants can't afford entry. Capital prevents competition. But the real bottleneck is sand. Semi-conductors come from silicon dioxide. The sand must be extraordinarily pure, 99.9999%. Impurities are measured in parts per billion.