Invading Taiwan isn't about chips at all, and in fact chips are actively disincentivizing invasion. Semiconductor fabs and the oodles of atomically precise ultra clean and ultra expensive equipment inside absolutely do not mix well with bombs.

Tangent but while the joint strike fighter program's decision to "save costs" by developing one platform for three branches may arguably have been a bad idea, by all respects except for perhaps long term maintenance costs the f35 is the most effective fighter in the skies.

True, Apollo 11 was famously filmed on mars

All semiconductor manufacturing techniques are based upon precisely flat layers of material that can be stacked and/or drilled into to produce a useful design. All vertical irregularities propogate to the layers above and can cause thinner layers when an upper layer is milled flat

Start with the rfc on udp since it's 4 pages long. Then you can pick from ipv4, ipv6, tcp, and then the html's (1, 1.1, 2, and 3).

I don't think it's stupid to believe that the brain is somehow beyond turing computable considering how easy it is to create a system exactly as capable as a turing machine. I also don't think that anything in philosophy can provide empirical evidence that the brain is categorically special as opposed to emergently special. The sum total of the epistemology I've studied boiled down to people saying "I think human consciousness / the brain works like this" with varying degrees of complexity.

That's the estimated total cost of the joint strike fighter program including research, acquisition, and maintenance, up to its current intended retirement in the 2060s

Fair point, but we should look at the length of time from napkin sketch to first delivery of final product; not just the design.

I understand that the manufacturing and testing was a nightmare, with the need to redesign multiple subsystems.

If the estimated unit cost of ~90-110 million dollars is right, I'd argue it's a pretty big success. The absolute cheapest 4th generation fighter would cost you an order of 20-30 million dollars to import brand-new, whereas 4.5th generation platforms like the Rafale commonly fetch 100m+ a unit to import.

As far as credible 5th generation strike fighters go, that's a pretty cheap per-squadron price tag. My bigger gripe is with the "Big Bomb Diplomacy" tactics that require such a platform, but we'd end up wanting one either way if a fight with China is in the cards.

I just say "speak to a pharmacist", wait until it starts to say something about how it can help and then again "speak to a pharmacist". I only get a controlled medication though so maybe it can be used for others