Arik Hesseldahl 🦋

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2,000-Year-Old Graffiti in Egyptian Tombs Reveals an Unexpected Source of Ancient Tourists The ancient scribbles, written in Tamil, read, “Cikai Korran came here and saw.”

The weirdest story on Fark.com this morning is about a south Indian tourist who left graffiti all over multiple Egyptian tombs 2,000 years ago.

“Cikai Korran came here and saw.”

Some of the best inscriptions known to history are essentially graffitti. Checking out The Jelling Stone in Denmark for one…

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🌨️🌨️🌨️🌨️
🪟😬😵‍💫😐
☕️☕️☕️☕️
📺📺📺📺

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And what policy makers in the US must understand is that in 2026 there is no amount of money that will mitigate this risk. That ship sailed probably two decades ago.

This isn't a situation that can be solved by TSMC expanding its footprint outside of Taiwan. The expertise, the training pipeline, the prepared workforce are all the result of two or three generations of operating there and creating a massive ecosystem around it. Taiwan IS the footprint.

Every successive generation of chip manufacturing technology is jointly developed by TSMC and ASML. The strategic combination of expertise and capabilities is metaphysically important to the global economy. The result is this: The two combined are simply irreplaceable. ...

Additionally there is not just one single point of failure with TSMC. There are two. The other is ASML, which is the only company in the world that can make the manufacturing gear capable of building the 2-3 nanometer chips. It's based in The Netherlands ... but....

...Intel and Samsung. Every important new chip company was fabless: Nvidia, then primarily a gaming chip co, Qualcomm in wireless, Broadcom in comms infrastructure, and Marvell, data center networking and interconnect. And Apple was desinging its own Silicon with Samsung.

The growth trajectory was however already clear, and the "fabless" trend of outsourcing manufaturing among chip companies was clearly taking hold. But at the time the most important chip in the world was the made in America Intel CPU. Within a decade most chip companies were fabless except...

When I worked for Electronic News (RIP) in the late 1990s I tried to write a "what if" scenario story concerning a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and the economic implications of losing access to TSMC and UMC. No one in the industry nor in the Clinton Administration would engage on the subject.

The Looming Taiwan Chip Disaster That Silicon Valley Has Long Ignored

Today's @nytimes.com takeout on the geopolitical risk in Taiwan concerning TSMC and leading edge silicon chips is easily the most important tech and business story you will read this week. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/24/t...

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