Remote Ownership

Parker Dillmann
Welcome to circuit break from MacroFab, a weekly podcast about all things engineering, DIY projects, manufacturing, industry news, and disabling equipment. We're your hosts, electrical engineers, Parker Dillmann.

Stephen Kraig
And Stephen Kraig.

Parker Dillmann
This is episode 432. So before we get started, I have an update from MacroFab. I wrote an article about the tariffs we talked about last week it's I only really so what this article is is focusing on how much your bill of materials will go up because this new tariff. Well, it's not even a new tariff. It's increasing of tariffs that already exist.

Parker Dillmann
Right.

Stephen Kraig
It's augmenting it. Yeah. Augmenting.

Parker Dillmann
Pray we don't augment it further. So the the one I focused on it for the article was the semiconductor tariff because that's what's going to affect probably everyone that talks or not talks. Everyone that's listening to this podcast, and that is bumping semiconductor tariff from 25% to 50% over I think it's, like, the next year or 2, something like that. Unfortunately, they there's not a lot of technical details around what semiconductors mean because there's a lot of different what's called harmonized tariff codes, HTS codes.

Stephen Kraig
Right.

Parker Dillmann
That deal with this kind of stuff, and if basically, you need to find what component falls under whatever the HTS code is, that's what the tariff is. And so I just went in and just picked what I thought were HTS codes that would be affected by this. There's, like, a list of, like, 20 or 25 of them. I posted them in the blog post, and they're like MOSFETs, microcontrollers, LEDs, stuff that would have semiconductors in it. And then what I did is I went and pulled the last year of invoices from our our invoices from Mauser and Digi Key.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, wow. That's those are probably significant.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. There's there's a lot of data there.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
And so what what's so you can't go the reason why I was pulling the invoices is is we can't go, like, you, me, anyone else. You can't Mouser won't tell you or Digi Key for this matter. Won't tell you what the HTS code of the component. I think actually Digi Key tells you the HTS code now at the bottom of the bottom of the part. They actually will tell you HS code, But they won't tell you the country of origin.

Parker Dillmann
Okay?

Stephen Kraig
I thought they did.

Parker Dillmann
Do they now?

Stephen Kraig
I don't know. But I I swear you could get both on Mouser at least.

Parker Dillmann
No. Because Mouser only puts it on the invoice.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, yeah. But they don't broadcast it on the website.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. It's not on the website. And and you can't go through the API either and get it. And so

Stephen Kraig
I'm on Digi Key right now just looking at a Joe Schmoe op amp, and the the HTS code is on there.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. The HTS code's there, but not the COO, country of origin. Right. And so what I did was but they when when you buy the part, they have to tell you what the country of origin is on the packaging. So I basically got all that data from the invoices.

Parker Dillmann
The good thing is we actually scan all that information in on inbound inspection. So a lot of it, I was able to just query in our database. And then I basically built I correlated the invoices with with actual PCB stuff, and I was able to get what and then I basically filtered it out being like hey it's these hgs codes and only country origin China is affected And I basically found out that I'm still crunching more and more data, but it's only a average increase of 1.72% on bill of material increase.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, due to the the last hike. Right? Not this current one.

Parker Dillmann
Yes. From From the current hike to the next one, it's only a 1.72% increase on average over billed material. And, well, I I wanna dig further into this data because what it looks like is basically over the past couple years since the tariff increase, people are I don't know this for sure, but this is what it looks like from its top level. It's people are actually actively picking components that are not made in China.

Stephen Kraig
I don't know if it's words, the tariffs are doing what?

Parker Dillmann
don't know if it's because of cost reasons or they are diversifying supply chains or whatever. I don't know that, but that's what it looks like and what I want to do is like I want to graph out like over time like percentage of bill materials that are COO China and seeing how that correlates over time does that increase or decrease or how does that change so I'm gonna start making, like, blog posts about this kind of data. I think that might be interesting.

Stephen Kraig
As it trends?

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Yeah. So I wanna I need to finish up building all the data first because I'm, like, combining multiple different sources together and put package it together. And what I wanna kinda do is set it up where it's like a a part trend database that so I can query data or trends against and see if I can figure out if there are trends like this where, like, people are picking less Chinese parts or or picking more. Were people shifting?

Parker Dillmann
What's what we're talking about last week was most Chinese semiconductors we're talking about revenue. Right?

Parker Dillmann
Where Chinese the China semiconductor revenue only accounts for 17%, but they account for oh, what was it? I I I found it last week.

Stephen Kraig
In terms of volume well, yeah. You you you're going for a volume number. Right?

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So US manufactured volume is only 8%, and China's 22% by volume.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
But US revenue is 40% for 17th China. So it's flipped around.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. We make fewer things, but they're more expensive.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. And that's actually what I'm seeing is the more pricier components were made in Taiwan, Malaysia, and and United States, whereas the cheaper semiconductors were typically made in, actually, almost all over the place. There were some US stuff, but most of it was China and Philippines.

Stephen Kraig
So so you were gathering the COO from invoices. In my experience, the COO is printed on just the PDF invoice you get from

Stephen Kraig
Them. But do you do you have a way of extracting that? So you can automate

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. I wrote a I wrote a Python interpreter to take the PDF, digitize it, and then it most of the PDFs are searchable, so it's great because Yeah. That's so it's easy to convert to text. You don't have to OCR it. Right.

Parker Dillmann
You just have to read the text out of it. And so and I took that out, and the problem is over time, the the invoices change. Yeah. And so I basically had to make a couple different structures to strip out the the COO and HTS correctly. Mhmm.

Stephen Kraig
I I that would be really curious to know. Well, so so you saw, what, 1.7 percent change? Was that what it was?

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. 1.72%.

Stephen Kraig
Okay. 1.72% change increase in bomb price, which that doesn't even if we're talking about American currency, that doesn't even keep up with inflation. Right?

Parker Dillmann
Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
So the it would be really interesting to see what percentage of bombs have changed. Are are like, are they actually reducing That's actually the thing

Parker Dillmann
I wanna do next. What's, like, complete I have 10 years worth

Parker Dillmann
of stuff to do.

Stephen Kraig
You have a lot of data.

Parker Dillmann
And so I have a lot of data to crunch into this thing. And I actually gonna talk to, a couple of our our developers and be like, hey. Because I've never done data on this scale, and I wanna be like, hey. What's the best way for me to store this data? Like, anywhere.

Parker Dillmann
Like Right. If it's on my computer, what's the best structure for it? Because right now, it's like a big old, like, Python dictionary.

Stephen Kraig
So that could get real big real fast.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. And I'm just doing, like, old school, like, if I have to save it, it just gets it's called pickled. I'm I'm just pickling up jarring up the the data Right. To a text file, which is not the best also because searching that is kinda slow. Mhmm.

Parker Dillmann
So there's gotta be a better way database for me to learn.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. You're getting into date database management, basically.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. So I wanna I wanna combine that data and because one thing I'm also recording is the price that we paid as well per unit.

Parker Dillmann
Mhmm.

Parker Dillmann
And it could be interesting from, like, a historical perspective to see how prices have changed too. But I'm mostly interested in how have engineers changed their component picking. That's what I'm more interested in.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That, that would be really fascinating. In fact, some it's something that that that's fun.

Stephen Kraig
So so earlier today, I was working on a on a small project. It's nothing particularly spectacular, but it's something I haven't done in a in about a year or so is work on something smaller like this mainly because I've just been devoting a lot of my time to my my job. And being a component engineer in aerospace has changed my outlook on parts quite a bit. And I'm not gonna say it necessarily for the positive because when it comes down to your your jelly bean parts like r's and c's and and things of that sort. In the aerospace industry, there's there's there's sort of a mindset of the the cost doesn't matter.

Stephen Kraig
The difference between a 10¢ resistor and a $1 resistor is so minuscule that you don't even ask the question about that. Because, you know, we're not building, you know, 10,000 units. We're building 10. And so having a a resistor cost a dollar versus 10¢ means virtually nothing. So when it comes down to smaller parts, the the cost is just outweighed by whatever the performance is.

Stephen Kraig
You just you pick whichever one and you don't ask questions and you just move on. Whereas with previous jobs, I had to pay attention to the cost of every little thing because it does hit your bottom line quite a bit more. And so moving back to doing this smaller project, I was actually picking some parts earlier today and realized that, a a family of Panasonic capacitors that I had been using in the past, they're virtually all of them are going last time by or out of stock. And and the price that was associated with that particular type of capacitor is being replaced with a newer capacitor that is 4 or 5 x the cost. And it seems to be the exact same part.

Stephen Kraig
So it seems to be it's not like they're just raising the price on this part. They're just obsoleting it, introducing this new one that is significantly more expensive. And I I it's it's a little shocking just because, like I said, I haven't really been paying attention to cost as much as I had in the past until today. And I'm I'm I'm concerned that that might be a trend that we see going forward because a a 4, 5 x cost on something that's these capacitors were not the cheapest thing to begin with, but a 4 5 x cost could really hurt the bottom line quite a bit.

Parker Dillmann
Mhmm. So

Stephen Kraig
yeah. I am curious to see this. I would, you know, if you have something, like, maybe even once a quarter or something like that where there's an update on this, I would love to see that. That's that's some really cool data. And you're in a really unique place because you work at a place that has all the data available, but this isn't necessarily a thing that Macrofab is.

Stephen Kraig
We're not you're not itching to do this.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. We're not a we're not a we're not a data broker. We don't we we our business is building boards for people, not, like, collecting or selling data or anything like that. Right. So doing this kind like, we've done dude we've done data analysis on stuff before to figure out, like, what kind of features we should add next to the product.

Parker Dillmann
Right? But we haven't been, like we haven't used our data to to make market trends. Haven't done that before. And so that's why I'm I'm like, we collect all this HTS codes and stuff just so that when we go and ship, let's say, it gets built onto a board, so we know what HTS codes apply to the board when it gets shipped internationally, for example.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
Or to know, oh, this HTS code falls under, you know was it year 99 or whatever it is? Yeah. Oh, so then we gotta make sure that this, like, this part can't get put on a board. It's gonna go to a particular country. That kind of stuff.

Parker Dillmann
That's why those that stuff's collected. Not because we are, you know, trying to analyze that. So this is the first time we've been trying to I've been trying to at least doing it, and all the data is kinda like, it's not centralized because it's not it was never designed to be for this kind of stuff. So

Stephen Kraig
You you know what? They've really cool. God. This this would add we're feature creep in here, here, but but but follow me on this. It'd be really cool.

Stephen Kraig
Let's just pick on capacitors because we were just talking about them. You have 10 years worth of data of buying loads of capacitors. Right? You've bought tons of capacitors. It would be cool to see a chart over the last 10 years of average capacitor price.

Stephen Kraig
Obviously, the the spread is gonna be really wide on that, but but I guess if you average that many that you've bought, you probably get a fairly decent number. But but an average price and show the rate of increase in cost of what capacitors do across the decade. And then compare that to other component types and what component increases the most in price over a decade?

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. So right now, I'm doing basically my for my because my data structure is very simple because I'm like, Misha, our CEO, basically was like, Parker, this is on Wednesday last week. I was like, Parker, you should write a blog article about the tariffs. And he and I'm like, cool. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
I can do that. And he's like, you should have it done by Friday. And I'm like, as I've already thought of exactly what I wanted to write before giving the getting the due date

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
And I'm like, oh, I thought because I was like, oh, I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna get the HTS codes. I'm gonna collect all this data, and I'm gonna analyze what the bill material average cost is gonna be so we actually know what the impact for our customers is gonna be. Great article. And I'm like, yeah. It's gonna take me probably, like, in my brand, like, oh, it'll probably take me about a week or so to get all that data to in a form that I'd be happy with.

Parker Dillmann
And then he's like, Friday, and I'm like, shit. So I did my best to get that one. Because that 1.72% might change. I think that is a good it was at trending in that spot. So I'm like Well

Stephen Kraig
and and and that's that's the number. You you you came to the number that people actually care about. Like, how much are these tariffs actually impacting me? Yeah. And and and you're right.

Stephen Kraig
Maybe that number changes, but it's probably not gonna go from 1.7 to 20% unless you made an egregious error, which you probably didn't. So so yeah. Call it 2%. Whatever. It still doesn't matter.

Stephen Kraig
But but, yeah, that's the number that that people really care about. All the rest of those numbers, like, what I was talking about trending things is more a curiosity out out of anything else.

Parker Dillmann
I wanna see my my the thing I wanna see the most is out of this trend data is, is there a trend in point 1 microfarad capacitors in terms of part numbers?

Stephen Kraig
I I I wonder if you could trend the capacitor shortage back in, what, 2018 or whatever?

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. 2018.

Stephen Kraig
It was the is there, like, a notch in your data?

Parker Dillmann
Probably. Yeah. Yeah. It's I gotta talk I gotta talk to some of the developers. Dan Holm is one of our our leads, and I'll probably talk to him and be like, k.

Parker Dillmann
I wanna set up this database. Kirk's back to us in my structure right now is the top level is the part number.

Parker Dillmann
Mhmm.

Parker Dillmann
And then and then under that are the each invoice that part number falls under. So under that invoice, it has so let's say this in it has a date, it has the COO, it has how much we paid for that part, has the quantity, basically, all the metadata of from that invoice. Because, like, we bought parts multiple times over the years, so I wanted to get that trend data that way. Because what if a COO changes over time? Because that can happen.

Parker Dillmann
So that's the stuff I wanna know is that'd be really cool. Like, overall components, which one has changed COO the most?

Stephen Kraig
How do you even track that, though? Because invoices. You're you're you're well, but you're not necessarily tracking. You're just seeing, like, the impact of purchasing things.

Parker Dillmann
Well, no.

Stephen Kraig
I mean, how

Parker Dillmann
I can see if if if part numbers changed a COO, it'll pop up in the data.

Stephen Kraig
Well, I but but but my argument is, you know, a lot of a lot of manufacturers share the same part number. So how do you know, like, how are you actually tracking the correct part number?

Parker Dillmann
It's the manufacturer part number. Okay. That's what I'm tracking. I'm tracking the MPNs. Now, technically, that's in incorrect because we we have in internally at, we have what's called I don't know what they call it, but it's a combination of the MPN and the manufacturer.

Parker Dillmann
Because there are some MPNs that are the same.

Stephen Kraig
Right. There's transistors where you can get the same flavor

Parker Dillmann
from Yes.

Stephen Kraig
10 different guys.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. So I need what I need to do is basically I need to restructure and go off was, like, the combine, which is basically manufacturer and the part number.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
I it's like part ID or something like that, and our system I can't remember what it's called.

Stephen Kraig
See that? Yeah. That was my argument. Tracking those is difficult. There's others where there's one manufacturer, so tracking that's easy.

Parker Dillmann
Right? Yes. So I need to I need to go to that method, which is getting the part ID, basically. Because it what I would love to do I don't know if it's ever gonna happen or if we can even do this. I don't know.

Parker Dillmann
But I'd love if because we do have a part searching in our platform, and I'd love to one actually just have because right now you have to be in, like, the build material to look for parts, which is fine. That's where you go clicking to say you want that part on your board. But I love it. It was like its own thing so you could just search for parts in our platform without having to associate with the board. And if it if we could show, you know, the historical data about pricing about it, maybe I don't know if we if we can get, like, stock values, like, quantity over time, like, vendors have.

Parker Dillmann
I don't know if we can get that. I know we have we can get that from our data sources, but I don't know if we can publish that. There's that's someone else's data, and we can't publish that. Right. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
Or store no. We can't I think we can publish it, but we can't store it. So we can't use it for historical reasons. That's how that works. Try to remember.

Parker Dillmann
It's been a long time since I've looked at all that stuff. But what I'd love to be able to do is surface like like you search for a part and you go, hey. The last time we ordered this part since we order we ordered this part before, last time it was COO this, and just be like, previously known COO and just says that.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
The the only I think there's only one vendor I know of that actually says what the COO is, and that's Arrow. Arrow will actually tell you what the country of origin of what their stock is. Everyone else, I think, doesn't show that because it can change. Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
It would be really cool to see historical trends of the pricing of that part.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Well, it'd be very interesting, actually, the trend in the pricing at and pick were, like, where the first tariffs went into play. Remember that?

Parker Dillmann
Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
And saying, hey. Did Chinese parts go up in price by the 25%, or did or did, you know, all parts go up in that price? That amount of money? Like, did did parts in Malaysia become more competitive in pricing?

Stephen Kraig
Does Aero Displaysio o yeah. No lie. Okay. Sorry.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. It's right there where you go type the quantity. Yeah. Yeah. They show you the lot numbers there too sometimes.

Parker Dillmann
That's It's really nice. I really wish, more vendors did that.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. I wonder I wonder if there's a reason why they don't do that.

Parker Dillmann
I don't know.

Stephen Kraig
There has there has to be a good reason because I don't think that vendors are, you know, trying to skirt data or give you less data. More is generally better with this. Although although I I am looking at an arrow page for I don't know. What is this part? It's a comparator.

Stephen Kraig
And they put a boatload of data on the on the web page, which I I've talked to some people at at Digi Key about how they actually go and scrub PDFs and get data up onto the website, and it it is not a small task for them to do that. In fact, the last time I heard, I think it was Digi Key has a team of over 200 people working full time

Parker Dillmann
of just

Stephen Kraig
just getting data of parts onto the website. And to see Arrow have this much data I mean, we're talking about for this comparator just I don't know. Let me pull something up. Maximum input offset voltage in millivolts. They they call it 7 volts at 5 right.

Stephen Kraig
7 millivolts at 5.5 volts. So so someone had to go into the data sheet and actually scrub all of that out, which maybe that wasn't a a particularly good example, but all I'm saying is there's a lot of data in here. So for them to also put country of origin, it's just one more step that somebody has to go and do. What's interesting is I I actually talked to someone about getting data onto Digi Key, and and and my one of my first suggestions was why doesn't Digi Key just make it or and maybe not Digi Key, anyone. Why do why doesn't any of the big vendors make it such that the manufacturer goes on and says, hey.

Stephen Kraig
I wanna sell my part here, so I will put the data on it. Because, hey, who knows the data best, but the manufacturer actually does it. And and this this person was like, you would be surprised how hard it is to get them to care about putting the data up there on on our website. So they did they stopped trying. They stopped asking the manufacturers to be like, hey.

Stephen Kraig
Will you fill this out? Even though that that makes the most sense, right, to say, hey. You wanna sell your whizbang IC on there. We'll happily sell it for you. Put this data up there.

Stephen Kraig
He's like, no. It was actually hard to get get involvement in that. So that's why they have a team of 200 full time employees doing that. Scrubbing data. Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
Which you are a full time employee doing it for macro.

Parker Dillmann
I'm not doing it full time. But I I I wanna see if we can figure out how do I I need to talk to, like, higher ups about I think I need to build, like, good proof of concepts. I'd love to be able to make this dump this data more available to our customers. More automated for sure. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
Well, the automation's not, I've actually got most of it automated. Like, it kinda just does its thing. It doesn't I don't have to really do much to it.

Stephen Kraig
Well, I mean, the automate automation as in like, you were mentioning, if if if a customer goes and clicks on a on a part

Parker Dillmann
Oh, yes. Then it

Stephen Kraig
automatically shows historical data about

Parker Dillmann
that. I don't I just don't know, like like, there might be a reason why Mauser and Digi Key don't show the COO, and there's something I'm not thinking about.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Right. Right.

Parker Dillmann
So I I just don't know. But I am going to start making reports because actually it was a lot of fun writing that article. So I wanna do more trends.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. And

Parker Dillmann
then I have the 19 fifties. Trends in engineering.

Parker Dillmann
Look to my Michael fan. I think See the wonders about blowing your PCB now.

Stephen Kraig
You you should totally make a little bumper reel for these,

Parker Dillmann
it's like Mac holding up the so we have a we actually have a a unofficial mascot at Macra Fab called Mac.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
And he's a little p little little cartoon character that's shaped like a PCB. Having Mac hold up, like, the world and, like, the m logo is, like, spinning around it.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Doing, like, an old old radio broadcast with the xylophones going on in the background.

Parker Dillmann
It's like Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
Statistical analysis from Macrofab.

Parker Dillmann
I like it.

Stephen Kraig
That'd be really fun. They all all of this has to make sense for you to do, though.

Parker Dillmann
Yes. Exactly.

Stephen Kraig
At the end of the day, Macofab is a business. You can't just get data and be like, that's cool. It has to actually it has to go towards something.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. And then that's why we we don't make our business isn't to look at component historical historical trends.

Stephen Kraig
Correct.

Parker Dillmann
But I'd like I think we could since I'm in marketing full time now, I think I could pitch that as, hey. I wanna do a blog article every month about trends, you know, about different components and that kind of stuff. And that way, at least I can build that. Now does that make it so it's publicly available to our customers? That's a different story on that.

Stephen Kraig
Well, it and it's really cool to see what the impact of the tariffs were. I mean, I know you and I talked about the tear the the first round of tariffs years ago. We talked about them probably on 3 or 4 episodes. We even had a full episode dedicated to them. Mhmm.

Stephen Kraig
And, and I'm I'm sure there was a a a lot of predictions that we did with them, but now we're actually seeing the impact, like, day to day impact of them. And and we're obviously looking purely at the electronics industry and PCA assembly. Right?

Parker Dillmann
A 100%.

Stephen Kraig
And not even just The tariffs were way bigger than that.

Parker Dillmann
And not even assembly, just the parts.

Stephen Kraig
Well, yeah. The parts PCB is included as a part.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Yeah. Well, if I get further on that project, I'll let everyone in the podcast sphere know.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. That's pretty cool.

Parker Dillmann
Till next time on the Baccarat Fab Engineering podcast.

Stephen Kraig
I love it.

Parker Dillmann
Alright. So we have a news article that I found this morning. So similar vein of tariffs, but not tariffs. This article is titled ASML and TSMC can disable chip machines if China invades Taiwan. And this is a Yahoo link finance Yahoo link.

Parker Dillmann
It's like a article about a interview that ASML and TSMC gave, I think, like, the Denmark government, if I recall.

Stephen Kraig
I think I think a bit of the machines that are used at t m TSMC are designed in Denmark.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. That's the the ASML company builds I think they're the sole provider of basically these high end machines, and they're based in Denmark.

Parker Dillmann
Mhmm.

Parker Dillmann
But The

Stephen Kraig
the the l in ASML is lithography. They they produce the lithography machines.

Parker Dillmann
Yes. But it's ASML is like A and M now.

Stephen Kraig
Wait. What? How so?

Parker Dillmann
ASML actually doesn't stand for anything.

Stephen Kraig
Oh,

Parker Dillmann
yeah. It used to stand for, like, advanced I actually wrote this down, hon. It stands for advanced semiconductor materials lithography. Yeah. And sometime in their span, they just made it it doesn't actually stand for anything anymore.

Parker Dillmann
It just stands for ASML. It's just ASML.

Stephen Kraig
Okay.

Parker Dillmann
Like a and m Texas A&M University used to be agricultural and mechanical, and now it's just a ATM is just ATM, the logo. A and M.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Right.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. It's just A and M.

Stephen Kraig
Well and there's a lot of schools that are A and M.

Parker Dillmann
Yes. Yeah. But I'm saying it used to stand for something, and they were like, well, we're more than agricultural and manufacturing, so we would just be called A&M because that's our trademark.

Stephen Kraig
Right.

Parker Dillmann
Right.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Right. Right. Same thing. Everyone's just like, college is weird.

Parker Dillmann
College football, at least.

Stephen Kraig
I guess I guess you your college that makes a lot more sense. Just it's just University of Texas. It's just an umbrella term. It's just always gonna be University of Texas.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Well, they always have to they have to do, like, at where now? Because there's so many other University of Texas's that are under that umbrella.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, right.

Parker Dillmann
Like, there's at Austin. There's at, San Antonio. There's at Dallas. There's there's actually one Houston as well. There's at Houston.

Stephen Kraig
There's a UT Houston?

Parker Dillmann
Mhmm.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, I didn't know that. Is it part of the UT family? Mhmm.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Small small satellite school. It's like A and M's got one down in Galveston.

Stephen Kraig
A and M actually okay. So my A and M has 3 branches or 3 other campuses or I'm sorry. Three campuses in total. It has the College Station 1, that's Galveston, and it has Qatar overseas. Every other A and M is not associated with Texas A and M.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
But no. Isn't there one in Corpus that is?

Stephen Kraig
No. I think it's just those 3.

Parker Dillmann
The guitar one's weird. It is. Did we ever talk about that on the podcast?

Stephen Kraig
I don't think so.

Parker Dillmann
Maybe I don't think we ever. I was reading up about that a couple of months when that popped up about 6 months ago.

Stephen Kraig
And I I think the majority of it is for petroleum engineering.

Parker Dillmann
It's petroleum engineering, but it's this this gets a little conspiracy about this. So warning everyone

Parker Dillmann
Oh, it's

Stephen Kraig
gonna be juicy.

Parker Dillmann
Is well, a and m, Texas a and m, actually, is one of the better or one of the best nuclear energy programs and all that research.

Stephen Kraig
Mhmm. I didn't know that.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. And so when this Qatar this is the whole thing with the Qatar thing is they get that government has access to that research.

Stephen Kraig
Okay.

Parker Dillmann
That's the conspiracy theory stuff.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, okay. I I was like, where's the conspiracy here?

Parker Dillmann
Well, it's giving another country access to that kind of research. Is that a good thing or bad thing? Got it. Alright. Make your own decisions about that because it's been a long time since I've read up about it, and I'm probably uneducated about that topic right now.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. I have no idea. In fact, even going even when I was at school, I had no idea what the Qatar school was even doing other than I think petroleum engineering.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. I think that's what it's that's the what it's billed as, but it does have access. Anyways, if you're interested about that, go Google the Copic. There's a lot of articles about it. Is that a good thing that a US our US tax dollars going to a country.

Parker Dillmann
Well, I you know what? No. I'm not gonna talk about that. We've talked about a couple 2

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let I'll we should probably get back to ASML and TSMC.

Parker Dillmann
Yes. Let's do that. So what this whole interview was about was ASML and TSMC basically guaranteeing that if there was an invasion of Taiwan, that they could just turn off the machines that are building all these fancy chips. So basically making these factories useless as factories because you couldn't put they're the only company that makes these these machines and these advanced machines. So so that so what's what I wanna talk about there is

Stephen Kraig
more of

Parker Dillmann
what does that mean, though? Like, just remote and they also were saying, like, yeah. We can even turn off the machines in China because China has some of these machines. They don't have the more advanced ones like TSMC has, but they have some fairly ad I mean, all these machines are crazy advanced. Right?

Stephen Kraig
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well and and ASML started reducing, if not completely closing off all shipment of machines to China not that long ago.

Parker Dillmann
Correct.

Stephen Kraig
That's one of the reasons why they don't have the really high end machines.

Parker Dillmann
Yes. And so the first thing that kinda was in my mind is, is it ethical to remotely shut down critical manufacturing equipments like this?

Stephen Kraig
Well, at the so the only now here's the thing. Is it ethical to shut it down depends entirely upon the reason for shutting it down. Right?

Parker Dillmann
That's true.

Stephen Kraig
So is it okay. This actually goes into some other stuff we've talked about in the past with, like, Ford implementing some potential options for putting your truck in limp mode if you miss a payment or even having self driving cars return themselves to the dealership if you if you miss a payment.

Parker Dillmann
Auto repo. Auto repo.

Stephen Kraig
Right. Right. Right. Right. Is it you know, is that ethical?

Stephen Kraig
You know, perhaps. I'm not entirely sure. But the idea that if somebody who is a potential bad actor on the world stage invades a country with the express intent of capturing this manufacturing capabilities, is it unethical to remotely remove those those capabilities? You know, I'm not sure. My my gut feeling says yes or I'm sorry.

Stephen Kraig
No. It's not unethical. Yes. That is an acceptable action. Although, I don't like the idea of giving someone else power over my property from, you know, thousands of miles away.

Stephen Kraig
Now, of course, that's somewhat goofy because we don't necessarily have that luxury anymore there's so many things that I guarantee you somebody could do something with a a large portion of my electronics that I own from from where you know, remotely. So it's difficult, but I would say no. I don't think that's unethical.

Parker Dillmann
I think what's more I I I kind of agree. It depends on the reason. What I think is more concerning is that they put in a backdoor to be able to disable it remotely.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Well and and and the thing is they put in that backdoor, I think, for this exact purpose. The I don't think they were putting in a backdoor for just like, I was suggesting, like, you miss a payment, and they shut it off. I don't think they were putting a backdoor for those kind of purposes. I literally think they were they they put this in for the express purpose of shutting it off due to invasion or war.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. And I do agree that with that. It's the the stories that float around on the Internet, I don't know how true these are, but there are stories on the Internet of a factory just, like, moving this a high end CNC machine and then having to have a that company come out and unlock it because the GPS determined it moved. And so it, like, locked itself down.

Stephen Kraig
Right. Right. That I don't know. That that seems a little. What's the purpose of that?

Stephen Kraig
Why why is that necessary?

Parker Dillmann
Well, I think it's because there are some machines. It's like ITAR controls. Let's say you were building a machine that or or you have a machine oh, man. What would be a good example of it building this? Because, like, you can go on the way and be, like, a machine that builds nukes, which

Parker Dillmann
would be a lot

Stephen Kraig
of stuff. I I was just oh, a centrifuge is the, like

Parker Dillmann
yeah. That what's more generic? But if you were a company that was designing the centrifuge that enriched uranium.

Stephen Kraig
Correct. Yeah. You you you would track the hell out of those things.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Where that went. Right.

Stephen Kraig
Right. So so but but but but just a generic CNC that can be used for doing whatever task shutting that down, I don't understand the reasoning behind that.

Parker Dillmann
I wonder if there are some machines, depends on the CNC machine, I guess, that is ITAR controlled.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Yeah. It It

Parker Dillmann
could be the data on that machine's ITAR controlled. Well, it yeah. I could see.

Stephen Kraig
It it depends on if you store your files on the machine itself. And then for sure, the machine would get locked down. Well, really the computer does in the machine. Right? But, yeah, unless you can control if that data has been properly handled or not, then absolutely that makes sense.

Stephen Kraig
But the machine itself doesn't.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. I'm

Stephen Kraig
wondering It all depends on how generic or specific the machine is. Because even okay. Even if you have some super whizbang IC machine, if you're making if you're making controllers for toasters that have a bagel pin on it, it doesn't necessarily matter where that goes. Right? Do you care too much if it gets invaded and they make bagel pin ICs?

Stephen Kraig
It's it's it's much more about data control.

Parker Dillmann
What if what if you had what if you had the I mean, those so those they're just timers. Those big old controller. I actually have a PDF of 1. I'm trying to build a board around 1 right now.

Stephen Kraig
Are you really?

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. I actually I'm reading the article about CNC machines and ITAR. I think it's just the data on them.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. No. It has to be. Yeah. Because c and c's machines don't have history unless it's just data.

Stephen Kraig
Right.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. I guess so. Yeah. I wonder I wonder if that's a old I wonder if that CNC machine moving in the shop and having to be unlocked is a old wives tale, or it was it detected it moved, like, it shifted, and it was waiting to be recalibrated, which I can totally see. Because, like, when we move our machines

Stephen Kraig
You're required to have the manufacturer come out.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. We have to have the if we move our machines, the manufacturer has to come out and reset up the machine to make sure it's calibrated and flat because of how fast they move. And if it's slightly off, they won't cover, like, damage from the gantries and stuff.

Stephen Kraig
And they don't expect you to have the wherewithal or the the know how, I should say, to be able to do that. Correct.

Parker Dillmann
And so I could just see it just being, like, the CNC machine just has that capability to know if it moved built in. Our machines don't know. You could pick them up and drop move them around, and you could fire them back up, but we always wait for them to show up the calibrator because that's what you should do.

Stephen Kraig
Right.

Parker Dillmann
Right. Right. But I could I can totally see just putting a little accelerometer in there, and if it knows that it exceeded a certain g rating of moving that, hey. I moved. I probably shouldn't do anything until I've been recalibrated.

Parker Dillmann
I wonder if that's an old wives or old old engineering tale of CNC machines.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. I I bet I bet you were missing something here. There's probably something more to that, or maybe that is something that you agreed with the manufacturer about. So, you know, if that's built into your contract about, hey, if this ever moves, I will contact you or whatever. And then if you move it and it doesn't, and you don't contact them, then they shut it down.

Stephen Kraig
Sure. If that's in the contract, that's in the contract. Right?

Parker Dillmann
Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
So, yeah, there there may be something that we're missing here. However, the the fundamentals of what a CNC does doesn't make it national security if you move it. Right?

Parker Dillmann
Well, the idea would be it got moved somewhere else like China or or Mexico or something like that where it shouldn't be. Because let's say it's access controlled or restricted for shipment.

Stephen Kraig
Right.

Parker Dillmann
And, you

Stephen Kraig
know, I wonder perhaps there's also some legality from the manufacturer if their thing lands in a particular place. So they just need to know because they can get in trouble even if the end user is the one who's moving it. I guess so. So as always, these things are probably far more complex than than we have any idea about. But on the surface, it does feel kind of odd.

Stephen Kraig
Right? So I could totally okay. I can absolutely understand. We have not just American. There's so many countries that use TSMC for building ICs that go into their their military devices, into a lot of really high-tech stuff that we need to be and need to have kept secret.

Stephen Kraig
And so I'm sure data control is of utmost importance with these machines. So the idea of being able to remotely shut them off in the event that there is an issue is in the interest of many countries.

Parker Dillmann
Mhmm.

Stephen Kraig
So I get why they would build that in there. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the fact that ASML is building that in is a request from the US before it gets shipped to those those countries. It it wouldn't it wouldn't surprise me if in a contract when when the US writes a contract to build a particular type of IC for something, That contract says this this machine that this thing is built on must be able to be disabled. Like, those that kind of language is is not unheard of in in in defense and aerospace.

Parker Dillmann
But I'm I'm more worried about now is they put in this this backdoor. Is

Stephen Kraig
They can be abused?

Parker Dillmann
They're doors. People will find doors.

Stephen Kraig
They're doors. True. True.

Parker Dillmann
It's it's one of those it's it's kinda like the back or not backdoor, but the remote access, like, what Ford was is looking at doing. But why old companies are are looking at doing that. It's not just Ford. It's, you know, what if another bad actor got finally got a hold of that portal or that that WebSocket or I we we have no idea how it actually gets disabled. Right?

Parker Dillmann
They didn't go into that. Like, it could be disabled by them dropping a bomb on the factory.

Stephen Kraig
They they call them up and say, hey, go press the disable button on the machine.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Yeah. That could be it.

Stephen Kraig
It really could be.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Oh, man. It's there was a when I hear this story hopefully, I'm not making this up, but there was I remember a laptop that had it had the hard drive in the lid with an x on it and so you could shoot it and blow up the hard or and damage the hard drive.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, just punch a hole right through it?

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. What I wonder if I'm making that up.

Stephen Kraig
I mean, that sounds fantastical, but

Parker Dillmann
It sounds like super double 0 7.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. If if that's real, that's kind of awesome, actually.

Parker Dillmann
That that's what it reminds me of. You get you get the call, and you just huck a monkey wrench into into the machine.

Stephen Kraig
I gotta I gotta look this up now, because that sounds really cool.

Parker Dillmann
I I wish I hope I didn't just make that up a long time ago, because it feels like I'm recalling that from a story I I heard. I'm asking I'm asking Chat gpt the same question.

Stephen Kraig
Is chat gpt the new version of Googling? I I I guess.

Parker Dillmann
It is. Yeah. I think it works much it works better for me at least.

Stephen Kraig
It only gives you one answer, whereas Google gives you a gazillion.

Parker Dillmann
Oh, Chat GPT thinks it's an urban legend.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, well, but that's still pretty cool, though.

Parker Dillmann
Maybe it wasn't a movie I saw.

Stephen Kraig
Shoot here to destroy information?

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. It was just like an x on the laptop, and that's where you would shoot, and they would disable the lap disable the hard drive.

Stephen Kraig
I like that. That's pretty cool.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. So we don't know what this backdoor is for these machines at all. They're on purposely not telling us a lot of information.

Stephen Kraig
And the the okay. So the purpose of disabling the machine isn't necessarily to keep the technology of the machine from falling into an invasion country's hands or or the country that is invading their hands. It's to disable the machine from functioning such that it just basically becomes a brick and to potentially either destroy or prevent any gathering of data that is on the machine.

Parker Dillmann
Now they're they imply they can also just shut down these machines wherever they're at too, which means if it's kinda like mutually assured destruction of your semiconductor industry. If you invade Taiwan, we're gonna shut down all the machines in Taiwan and in China.

Stephen Kraig
True. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
So imagine right now if if China didn't know about this beforehand, which they probably did, they're probably trying to figure out how they are gonna shut it down. Because that's upwards where if someone came to me and was like, so you know you're a really awesome 3 d printer, well, bamboo could just shut that down whenever they want. I would be, like, figuring out how to make sure they couldn't do that. Right. Right.

Parker Dillmann
That would be my first thing.

Stephen Kraig
What is the the method? Because, I mean, this has just gotta be a network connected machine. Right? That Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
But then you would just air box or air air block it, and then it's fine. It's was it wireless then? Well, that'd be kind of a crazy signal, and you could just, you know, jam it or put it in a Faraday that'd be a big Faraday cage, but you could totally do it that way. So but they because they said we guarantee we can shut it down.

Stephen Kraig
That's And that's why I was thinking they just call them and say press the disable button.

Parker Dillmann
Well, that wouldn't work for in China though.

Parker Dillmann
Right.

Parker Dillmann
Right. Right. So that that's the interesting is what method is it? And I was chatting with some of my my friends, and they're like, well, that's cheaper than what what's it the what was the hypothetical weapon Stalin's fist or the rods of God?

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Rods of God. They just shoot it from space.

Parker Dillmann
It's a tungsten telephone pole that spun up and just dropped from orbit.

Stephen Kraig
Yep. Yep.

Parker Dillmann
So there was this got into, like, hypotheticals is so Starlink network. Right?

Parker Dillmann
Mhmm.

Parker Dillmann
How many satellites have I got? A lot. Let

Stephen Kraig
me look.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. How many salads I got? What if this is like me being like a double o seven evil villain right now. Is you put a 10 pound tungsten ball on every Starlink. Then you have then you have the shotgun of god.

Stephen Kraig
The shotgun

Parker Dillmann
of god.

Parker Dillmann
The rods of god? Yeah. The shotgun of god. It just drops these little pellets.

Stephen Kraig
Oh my god. So so as of 2024, there's 58100 Starlink satellites, which which, by the way, due to the apparently, they are stable, but they've been seeing some effects, let's just say, due to the more recent solar activity.

Parker Dillmann
Mhmm.

Stephen Kraig
So the sun's barfing out a bunch of extra radiation right now. And, Elon Musk came out saying that they are functioning, but they've had decreased functionality. I I'm I'm paraphrasing there, but it doesn't sound like they're going down, but it is affecting them.

Parker Dillmann
And and those those satellites are designed to break up really well under reentry because they're they're they're short term lived satellites.

Parker Dillmann
Right.

Stephen Kraig
They're

Parker Dillmann
they're put in really low earth orbit, really low.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
And so they only last a couple years, if that's. So putting in tungsten balls goes against that idea, but you could turn it into this crazy you can drop a tungsten ball on one specific building from orbit. But you could just launch a cruise missile and do the same thing. So it's like, why would you even go through that effort?

Stephen Kraig
Wikipedia calls that kind of an attack a kinetic bombardment. I I like

Parker Dillmann
that. Kinetic bombardment. Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
Feels a little more scientific than space shotgun.

Parker Dillmann
Space shotgun. I don't know. It's interesting. I kinda wanna know more about what kind of backdoor it is.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Like, how it actually gets executed.

Parker Dillmann
Yep. I don't know. If it's just a network connection, then that's super easy to to defeat.

Stephen Kraig
I'm I'm curious the community's thoughts if if if this is the kind of thing that you think is a good thing to have in in the machinery at TSMC or if this is something that you really feel like, nah, should not exist whatsoever. If you purchase a machine, it's up to you to handle everything, including an invasion.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. And or it could be also like a dead man switch where if you sever the connection, it it stops working.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, that could yeah. Okay. That could work too.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
Because if it was a network thing and there's an invasion and they just kill power to everything, then your backdoor is gone. Right?

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. It's interesting stuff. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
Let us know what you think about this because it's this, this start oh, this starts getting the right to repair as well.

Stephen Kraig
Well, that's that's sort of the the Ford thing and actually even more, I was thinking John Deere earlier where right to repair has been kind of a, a difficult topic.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. So this this is starting to get into is it ethical for this kind of technology to exist in stuff you own and affecting right to repair? Because if they can remotely turn off let's say, you bought the you bought the you bought a a a Google Pixel phone, and my phone is not listening to me right now.

Stephen Kraig
Yep. It's actually listening to you.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. When I lost my train of thought because of that stupid thing. Oh, and they come out with the new you buy a version couple years down their own, they come out in well, a couple years is is generous. The next year, they come out with the new version, and they go, oh, we're just gonna disable all these old phones now because of the old version, and they have security issues.

Stephen Kraig
Well, yeah, you're presenting it as a nefarious thing or or or they're they're they're they're presenting it as a nefarious thing. But yeah. Yeah. Right. Now you're starting to get more into the do you own that?

Stephen Kraig
Do you own every asset that breaks it? Yeah. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
Do you own that car if it could repo itself?

Stephen Kraig
Well, if you're not done with payments on it, do you own it? Like, I I think it's funny when people ask the question, do you or do you rent or do you own a house? The answer for me is I I'm I own my house, but I'm still paying it off. So, no, I don't own my house. Right?

Parker Dillmann
I think it depends on it is so when something happens on that property, whose fault is it?

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
It's not the banks. It's your fault. Whereas if something if you're renting and something happens on that property, it can be the landlord who owns the property's

Stephen Kraig
fault. Well, when I I'm using air quotes here. When I bought my house, somebody got the money for this house and the entirety of the money of this house. So this house was purchased at some point in time, probably multiple times with the house I live in. But it so so so when I went to buy it, a transaction was completed and the money was transferred.

Stephen Kraig
Now I am subject to paying off my house to someone else than than that. But so so do I own my house? It depends on who you ask and it depends on how it's being asked. Like I said, you know, the the differentiation between when we say renting versus owning very much means something even though, technically, both people are still paying something off.

Parker Dillmann
Sure. A good question is if your air conditioner breaks, who pays for it?

Stephen Kraig
Well right. I mean but but but but depending on where you rent, you're responsible for different things. Yes. Some some places when you went, you still are in charge of the the maintenance of things.

Parker Dillmann
That's like a lease. Well, for cars at least is like that.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Now we're getting off in the weeds.

Parker Dillmann
Now we're getting way off topic.

Stephen Kraig
Well, let us know what what you think about this topic. Do you think a backdoor in machinery that could potentially have security issues if an invasion were to happen. If you think that is ethical or nonethical, let us know. What is it? Forum.macfab.com.

Stephen Kraig
Come and Could you imagine

Parker Dillmann
could you imagine if there's an invasion and then all those cheap Chinese, like, 3 d printers start printing I don't know what they would print that could hurt you because it's just PLA plastic.

Stephen Kraig
The the the single shot pistols. They just all spin up.

Parker Dillmann
Oh, actually, I could see I could see a conspiracy of the cheap Chinese printers that are connected to the Internet, like, all turn on and start heating up and catching fire.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. I guess I guess if you have a backdoor that allows you to disable how much power you can push into the heater

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Yeah. Slash the firmware.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. I guess so.

Parker Dillmann
Yep. Anyways, let's let's leave. We're getting hypotheticals that probably don't exist.

Stephen Kraig
We're way off. So

Parker Dillmann
Okay. Sign us off?

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Thank you for listening to circuit break from Macrofab. We were your host, Steven Craig.

Parker Dillmann
And Parker Dohman.

Stephen Kraig
Take it easy.

Parker Dillmann
Breaker for downloading our podcast. Are you as you like conspiracy theories? I think Steven and I like conspiracy theories at least coming up with stupid ones. So tell your friends and coworkers about the conspiracy theories we come up on circuit break the podcast for macro fab or don't because we want more people to listen. I think it maybe we should lean more into conspiracy theories.

Stephen Kraig
Maybe we should have an episode about electrical engineering conspiracy theories. Oh. Like, specific.

Parker Dillmann
We need to get a guess for that.

Stephen Kraig
Yes. We do. That'd be awesome.

Parker Dillmann
So if you have a cool idea project or topic or electrical engineering conspiracy theory you want us to discuss, let Steven and I and the community of Breakers know our community where you can find personal projects, discussion about the podcast, and engineering topics and news. No conspiracy theories yet, but we can make an exception. It's looking at forum.macfab.com.