Japan's largest telecommunications company and the country's biggest newspaper called for speedy legislation to restrain generative AI, saying democracy and social order could collapse if AI is left unchecked. From a report: Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, or NTT, and Yomiuri Shimbun Group Holdings made the proposal in an AI manifesto to be released Monday. Combined with a law passed in March by the European Parliament restricting some uses of AI, the manifesto points to rising concern among American allies about the AI programs U.S.-based companies have been at the forefront of developing.

The Japanese companies' manifesto, while pointing to the potential benefits of generative AI in improving productivity, took a generally skeptical view of the technology. Without giving specifics, it said AI tools have already begun to damage human dignity because the tools are sometimes designed to seize users' attention without regard to morals or accuracy. Unless AI is restrained, "in the worst-case scenario, democracy and social order could collapse, resulting in wars," the manifesto said. It said Japan should take measures immediately in response, including laws to protect elections and national security from abuse of generative AI.

The Seattle Times has a Pulitzer Prize-winning aerospace journalist named Dominic Gates. Sunday he published an expose on "a yearslong decline of safety standards" at Boeing.

After a 1997 merger, its new executive leaders "treated experienced engineers and machinists as expendable, ignoring the potential damage to Boeing's essential mission of designing and building high-quality airplanes...." The arc of Boeing's fall can be traced back a quarter century, to when its leaders elevated the interests of shareholders above all others, said Richard Aboulafia, industry analyst with AeroDynamic Advisory. "Crush the workers. Share price. Share price. Share price. Financial moves and metrics come first," was Boeing's philosophy, he said. It was, he said, "a ruthless effort to cut costs without any realization of what it could do to capabilities...." Its leaders outsourced work, sold off whole divisions and discarded key capabilities such as developing avionics, machining parts and building fuselages. On the 787, they even outsourced the jet's wings to Japan. They moved work away from Boeing's highly skilled, unionized base in the Puget Sound region. They weakened unions and extorted state government with repeated threats to build future airplanes elsewhere. They squeezed suppliers by demanding price cuts every year that in turn forced the suppliers into ruinous cost-cutting and left them vulnerable to collapse during shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic....

Belatedly, Boeing's current leaders, overwhelmed by criticism, mockery and outrage since January, have finally admitted publicly that some key strategies they pursued for decades were flawed. "Boeing, more than 20 years ago, probably got a little too far ahead of itself on the topic of outsourcing," Chief Financial Officer Brian West said last month. And in January, on CNBC, Boeing Chief Executive Dave Calhoun conceded: "Did it go too far? Yeah, probably did."

Both were speaking about major supplier Spirit AeroSystems of Wichita, Kan., part of Boeing until it was sold off two decades ago, part of a broad divestment of assets to please Wall Street and boost the stock. Following a litany of quality lapses in Wichita, Boeing is now admitting a mistake and trying to buy Spirit back — "for safety and for quality," said West. Another mistake belatedly recognized: With annual bonuses for Boeing's factory managers based largely on meeting cost and schedule targets, it was long a cardinal sin to stop the assembly line. That meant unfinished jobs piled up on aircraft as they moved forward down the line, what Boeing calls "traveled work." Done out of sequence, this work is more difficult and takes much longer. If too much traveled work piles up, it creates chaos. That's what happened in Renton on the 737 assembly line. "For years, we prioritized the movement of the airplane through the factory over getting it done right, and that's got to change," West said. "Once you reduce traveled work, your quality gets better...."

Speaking of how Spirit might be fixed, West said: "It's really about focus and running it, not as a business, as a factory. Run it as a factory and stay focused on safety and quality and stability."
Phil Chandler, a highly skilled Boeing machinist for more than 42 years (retiring in 2020), saw a "dictatorial" approach on the factory floor, according to the article. "Whereas in the past, first-level and even second-level managers in the factory had come up through the ranks as mechanics and had deep knowledge of the work, after [Boeing president Harry] Stonecipher came in those jobs shifted to white-collar people with degrees, often with MBAs."

And a former Boeing physicist also complains about the "shoot-the-messenger" management approach when developing their 787, according to the article: "Engineers who raised technical doubts were told: 'Follow the plan. If you can't do your job, I'll fire you and get someone who can.'"

"Scary moments for passengers on a Southwest flight from Denver to Houston," tweets an ABC News transportation reporter, "when the engine cover ripped off during flight, forcing the plane to return to Denver Sunday morning."

"Think that big circular metal panel surrounding the engine," writes QZ — adding that after it ripped off, the engine cowling "struck the 737-800's wing flap."

It happened during takeoff, so the plane was towed back to the gate after returning to the airport. All passengers and crew were safe, and passengers boarded a replacement plane for their flight to Houston: Southwest was already having a rough few weeks before this event occurred. Last Thursday, an engine on one of its Boeing 737-800 planes caught fire before taking off from an airport in Texas, and before that, two FAA-scrutinized Southwest flights were disrupted by turbulence [One last month in New York City and the other in Florida on Wednesday. "Two hours later, an All Nippon Airways Boeing 787 reported an oil leak on arrival at Naha Airport, Japan," adds Newsweek.].
"We apologize for the inconvenience of their delay," Boeing said in a statement, adding that they "place our highest priority on ultimate Safety for our Customers and Employees.

"Our Maintenance teams are reviewing the aircraft."

President Joe Biden has become the first sitting U.S. president to post on a decentralized networking protocol. As reported by The Verge, President Biden's Threads account "has begun using Meta's ActivityPub integration," which allows for content, data, and followers to be ported between networks -- the basis that makes up the "fediverse." From the report: The account turning on fediverse posting comes only a couple of weeks after Threads rolled out its beta ActivityPub integration for users in the US, Canada, and Japan. Biden may not be able to see replies and follows as they pour in from the fediverse -- and with some servers blocking connections to Meta, not everyone there will be able to see his posts -- as those features weren't part of Threads' integration when it opened up beta testing last month. But his posts are available, and he'll see likes coming in from there. Or whoever is running the Presidential Threads account will, anyway.

Thawing ice in the Arctic may open up new routes for internet cables that lie at the bottom of the ocean and carry most international data traffic. And more routes matter when underwater infrastructure is at risk of attack. From a report: Baltic Sea gas and telecoms cables were damaged last year, with a Chinese vessel a potential suspect. Red Sea data cables were cut last month after a Yemeni government warning of attacks by Iran-backed Houthi rebels. Over 90 percent of all Europe-Asia traffic flows through the Red Sea route. The problem of critical data relying on only one path is clear. "It's clearly a kind of concentration of several cables, which means that there is a risk that areas will bottleneck," Taneli Vuorinen, the executive vice president at Cinia, a Finland-based company working on an innovative pan-Arctic cable, said.

"In order to meet the increasing demand, there's an increasing pressure to find diversity" of routes, he said. The Far North Fiber project is seeking to offer just that. The 14,500 kilometer long cable will directly link Europe to Japan, via the Northwest Passage in the Arctic, with landing sites in Japan, the United States (Alaska), Canada, Norway, Finland and Ireland. It would have been unthinkable until just a few years ago, when a thick, multiyear layer of ice made navigation impossible. But the Arctic is warming up at a worrying pace with climate change, nearly four times faster than the rest of the world. Sea ice is shrinking by almost 13 percent every decade.

A nearly two-pound piece of trash from the International Space Station may have hit a house in Florida. Alejandro Otero said it "tore through the roof and both floors of his two-story house in Naples, Florida," reports Ars Technica. "Otero wasn't home at the time, but his son was there." From the report: A Nest home security camera captured the sound of the crash at 2:34 pm local time (19:34 UTC) on March 8. That's an important piece of information because it is a close match for the time -- 2:29 pm EST (19:29 UTC) -- that US Space Command recorded the reentry of a piece of space debris from the space station. At that time, the object was on a path over the Gulf of Mexico, heading toward southwest Florida. This space junk consisted of depleted batteries from the ISS, attached to a cargo pallet that was originally supposed to come back to Earth in a controlled manner. But a series of delays meant this cargo pallet missed its ride back to Earth, so NASA jettisoned the batteries from the space station in 2021 to head for an unguided reentry.

Otero's likely encounter with space debris was first reported by WINK News, the CBS affiliate for southwest Florida. Since then, NASA has recovered the debris from the homeowner, according to Josh Finch, an agency spokesperson. Engineers at NASA's Kennedy Space Center will analyze the object "as soon as possible to determine its origin," Finch told Ars. "More information will be available once the analysis is complete." [...] In a post on X, Otero said he is waiting for communication from "the responsible agencies" to resolve the cost of damages to his home.

If the object is owned by NASA, Otero or his insurance company could make a claim against the federal government under the Federal Tort Claims Act, according to Michelle Hanlon, executive director of the Center for Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi. "It gets more interesting if this material is discovered to be not originally from the United States," she told Ars. "If it is a human-made space object which was launched into space by another country, which caused damage on Earth, that country would be absolutely liable to the homeowner for the damage caused." This could be an issue in this case. The batteries were owned by NASA, but they were attached to a pallet structure launched by Japan's space agency.

In the shadow of a massive monument glorifying nuclear power, over 30 nations from around the world pledged to use the controversial energy source to help achieve a climate-neutral globe while providing countries with an added sense of strategic security. Associated Press: The idea of a Nuclear Energy Summit would have been unthinkable a dozen years ago after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan, but the tide has turned in recent years. A warming planet has made it necessary to phase out fossil fuels, while the war in Ukraine has laid bare Europe's dependence on Russian energy. "We have to do everything possible to facilitate the contribution of nuclear energy," said Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. "It is clear: Nuclear is there. It has an important role to play," he said.

In a solemn pledge, 34 nations, including the United States, China, France, Britain and Saudi Arabia, committed "to work to fully unlock the potential of nuclear energy by taking measures such as enabling conditions to support and competitively finance the lifetime extension of existing nuclear reactors, the construction of new nuclear power plants and the early deployment of advanced reactors." The statement adds: "We commit to support all countries, especially emerging nuclear ones, in their capacities and efforts to add nuclear energy to their energy mixes."

In a Threads post today, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the Twitter rival is rolling out a beta of its fediverse integration in the U.S., Canada, and Japan. With the feature enabled, Threads users will be able to cross-post and view likes from other federated platforms, like Mastodon. The Verge reports: Threads previewed its fediverse integration earlier this week during the FediForum. As outlined on its support page, Meta says that you must have a public account to turn on fediverse sharing, which will allow users on other servers to "search for and follow your profile, view your posts, interact with your content, and share your content to anyone on or off their server."

There are still a few limitations, though. The beta currently doesn't let users view replies and follows from the fediverse, for example. Meta also can't promise that when you delete a federated post on Threads, it will also get deleted on the other platforms it was shared on.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: McDonald's restaurants are suffering global IT outages that prevent employees from taking orders and accepting payments, causing some stores to close for the day. The outages started overnight and are impacting restaurants globally, including those in the USA, Japan, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Italy, New Zealand, and the UK. "We are aware of a technology outage, which impacted our restaurants; the issue is now being resolved," McDonald's said in a statement to BleepingComputer. "We thank customers for their patience and apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Notably, the issue is not related to a cybersecurity event." In an updated statement, McDonald's says that the outage was caused by a third-party provider during a configuration change. "Many markets are back online, and the rest are in the process of coming back online. This issue was not directly caused by a cybersecurity event; rather, it was caused by a third-party provider during a configuration change."

Dan Robinson reports via The Register: Adding caffeine can enhance the efficiency of fuel cells, reducing the need for platinum in electrodes and significantly reducing the cost of making them, according to researchers in Japan. [...] The study, published in the journal Communications Chemistry, concerns the catalysis process at the cathode of a fuel cell and making this reaction more efficient. Fuel cells work somewhat like batteries. They generate power by converting the chemical energy of a fuel (or electrolyte) and an oxidizing agent into electricity. This is typically hydrogen as a fuel and oxygen as an oxidizer. Unlike batteries with limited lifespans, fuel cells can generate power as long as fuel is supplied. The hydrogen undergoes oxidation at the anode, producing hydrogen ions and electrons. The ions move through the hydrogen electrolyte to the cathode, while the electrons flow through an external circuit, generating electricity. At the cathode, oxygen combines with the hydrogen ions and electrons, resulting in water as a by-product. However, this water impacts the performance of the fuel cell, reacting with the platinum (Pt) to form a layer of platinum hydroxide (PtOH) on the electrode and interfering with the catalysis of the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), according to the researchers.

To maintain efficient operation, fuel cells require a high Pt loading (greater platinum content), which significantly ups the costs of fuel cells. A quick look online found market prices for platinum of $29.98 per gram, or $932.61 per ounce, at the time of writing. The researchers found that adding caffeine can improve the ORR activity of platinum electrodes 11 fold, making the reaction more efficient. If you are wondering (as we were) how they came to be experimenting with this, the paper explains that modifying electrodes with hydrophobic material is known to be an effective method for enhancing ORR. Caffeine is less toxic than other hydrophobic substances, and it activates the hydrogen evolution and oxidation reactions of Pt nanoparticles and caffeine doped carbons. Got that?

Chiba University's work was led by Professor Nagahiro Hoshi at the Department of Applied Chemistry and Biotechnology. He explained that the researchers found a notable improvement in the electrode's ORR activity with an increase in caffeine concentration in the electrolyte. This forms a thin layer on the electrode's surface, effectively preventing the formation of PtOH, but the effect depends on the orientation of the platinum atoms on the electrode's surface. The paper refers to these as Pt(100), Pt(110) and Pt(111), with the latter two showing increased ORR activity, while there was no noticeable effect with Pt(100). The researchers do not explain if this latter effect might be a problem, but instead claim that their discovery has the potential to improve the designs of fuel cells and lead to more widespread adoption.

The US could further tighten controls on China's access to sophisticated semiconductor technologies, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said, signaling Washington may intensify its campaign to prevent Beijing catching up in military capabilities. From a report: "We cannot allow China to have access for their military advancement to our most sophisticated technology," she told reporters in Manila on Monday. "So yes, we will do whatever it takes to protect our people including expanding our controls."

Raimondo, who is leading a trade delegation to the Philippines and Thailand, was asked if the US is planning to add new restrictions on the sale of semiconductors to China. The Biden administration is mulling fresh sanctions on several Chinese tech companies, including memory chipmaker ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc., while pushing allies to do more to curb the export of advanced tech to China, Bloomberg has reported in recent days. Washington has taken aim at China's chip industry for years, imposing sweeping controls on the export of advanced semiconductor-making machines and sophisticated chips like those used to develop artificial intelligence. Japan and the Netherlands, the two key countries where chip-making equipment is developed, joined the US effort last year.

A United Airlines Holdings aircraft ran off the taxiway into a grassy area after landing at Houston Friday, the third incident this week involving the airline's Boeing planes. From a report: United Flight 2477, with 160 passengers and six crew, had just landed at George Bush Intercontinental Airport about 8 a.m. local time Friday when it veered into the grass on a turn. No one was injured, and passengers left the plane on a set of stairs before being bused to the terminal, the airline said.

The incident follows the mid-air loss of a tire from a United Boeing 777-200 Thursday, just after the plane took off from San Francisco on a flight to Osaka, Japan, and an engine fire on a United flight from Houston to Fort Myers, Florida, earlier this week. The plane in the Houston-to-Florida flight had to make an emergency landing after one of its engines burst into flames 10 minutes after takeoff. The 21-year-old aircraft was also a 737 -- but an earlier version than the Max, according to FlightRadar24.

A washing-machine-sized satellite is to "name and shame" the worst methane polluters in the oil and gas industry. From a report: MethaneSat will provide the first near-comprehensive global view of leaks of the potent greenhouse gas from the oil and gas sector, and all of the data will be made public. It will provide high-resolution data over wider areas than existing satellites. Methane, also called natural gas, is responsible for 30% of the global heating driving the climate crisis. Leaks from the fossil fuel industry are a major source of human-caused emissions and stemming these is the fastest single way to curb temperature rises.

MethaneSat was developed by the Environmental Defense Fund, a US NGO, in partnership with the New Zealand Space Agency and cost $88m to build and launch. Earlier EDF measurements from planes show methane emissions were 60% higher than calculated estimates published by US authorities and elsewhere. More than 150 countries have signed a global methane pledge to cut their emissions of the gas by 30% from 2020 levels by 2030. Some oil and gas companies have made similar pledges, and new regulations to limit methane leaks are being worked on in the US, EU, Japan and South Korea.

The EDF's senior vice-president, Mark Brownstein, said: "MethaneSat is a tool for accountability . I'm sure many people think this could be used to name and shame companies who are poor emissions performers, and that's true. But [it] can [also] help document progress that leading companies are making in reducing their emissions." The oil and gas industry knows how to stop leaks and the cost of doing so is usually very modest, said Steven Hamburg, the EDF's chief scientist and MethaneSat project leader: "Some call it low hanging fruit. I like to call it fruit lying on the ground."

It completed the most precise landing ever on the moon — albeit upside-down. And then it faced a "lunar night" lasting about two weeks where temperatures drop to -270 degrees Fahrenheit, reports the Times of India.

But then, "Despite not being designed for the extreme temperatures, SLIM surprised scientists by coming back to life after the two-week-long lunar night." More from Space.com: The lander woke up on February 26 during extremely hot temperatures of 212 Fahrenheit (100 Celsius) in its region and has been making contact here and there with Earth in the days since. Most recently, SLIM attempted observations with its multiband spectroscopic camera, but "it did not work properly," JAXA officials wrote. "This seems to be due to the effects of overnight," the update continued, referring to the frigid two-week-long lunar night that SLIM experienced before the sun shone near Shioli crater again. "But we will continue to investigate based on the data we have obtained for the next opportunity...."
"We received so much support for our operations after the lunar night," the agency posted on social media — adding "thank you!"

The Times of India reports that "JAXA officially announced SLIM's return to a dormant state on March 1, sharing an image of the lunar surface captured by the probe."

Above the photo, JAXA posted this hopeful message. "Although the probability of a failure increases with the repeated severe temperature cycles, SLIM operation will attempt to resume when the sun rises (late March). #GoodAfterMoon."

And Space.com notes that "Despite all, SLIM has met both main and extended mission objectives: Landing precisely on the moon, deploying two tiny rovers and conducting science with its navigation camera and its spectroscopic camera, particularly searching for signs of olivine on the surface."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the news.

The U.S. and several international partners endorsed shared principles for developing 6G wireless communication systems, the White House said Monday. From a report: A battle is underway to influence the standards of 6G amid concerns by Western countries and their allies that authoritarian regimes could gain further control over Internet in their countries. Policies around wireless communications influence economic-growth and national security, fueling the race between the U.S. and China -- which claimed earlier this month that it had launched the world's first satellite "to test 6G architecture," per state media.

The governments of the U.S., Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Japan, South Korea, Sweden and the U.K. released a joint statement saying that by working together, "we can support open, free, global, interoperable, reliable, resilient, and secure connectivity." They laid out principles including using systematic approaches to cybersecurity, being protective of privacy and creating technologies that are widely available and accessible to developing nations.

"Apple will reportedly have to pay around €500 million (about $539 million USD) in the EU," reports the Verge, "for stifling competition against Apple Music on the iPhone. Financial Times reported this morning that the fine comes after regulators in Brussels, Belgium investigated a Spotify complaint that Apple prevented apps from telling users about cheaper alternatives to Apple's music service.... The EU whittled its objections down to oppose Apple's refusal to let developers even link out to their own subscription sign-ups within their apps — a policy that Apple changed in 2022 following regulatory pressure in Japan.

$500 million may sound like a lot, but a much bigger fine of close to $40 billion (or 10 percent of Apple's annual global turnover) was on the table when the EU updated its objections last year. Apple was charged over a billion dollars in 2020, but French authorities dropped that to about $366 million after the company appealed.
The Verge cites an Apple spokesperson who said a year ago that the EU case "has no merit."

Reuters that the EU's fine "is expected to be announced early next month, the Financial Times said."

More from Politico The fine would be the EU's first ever against Apple and is expected to be announced early next month, according to the FT report. It is the result of a European Commission antitrust probe into whether Apple's "anti-steering" requirements breach the bloc's abuse of dominance rules, harming music consumers "who may end up paying more" for apps... The Commission will rule that Apple's actions are illegal and against EU competition rules, according to the report.
"The EU executive will ban Apple's practice of barring music services from letting users know of cheaper alternatives outside the App Store, according to the newspaper."

Japanese scientists plan to launch a satellite made of magnolia wood this summer on a U.S. rocket, reports the Observer.

Experiments carried out on the International Space Station showed magnolia wood was unusually stable and resistant to cracking — and "when it burns up as it re-enters the atmosphere after completing its mission, will produce only a fine spray of Âbiodegradable ash." The LignoSat probe has been built by researchers at Kyoto University and the logging company Sumitomo Forestry in order to test the idea of using biodegradable materials such as wood to see if they can act as environmentally friendly alternatives to the metals from which all satellites are currently constructed. "All the satellites which re-enter the Earth's atmosphere burn and create tiny alumina particles, which will float in the upper atmosphere for many years," Takao Doi a Japanese astronaut and aerospace engineer with Kyoto University, warned recently. "Eventually, it will affect the environment of the Earth."

To tackle the problem, Kyoto researchers set up a project to evaluate types of wood to determine how well they could withstand the rigours of space launch and lengthy flights in orbit round the Earth. The first tests were carried out in laboratories that recreated conditions in space, and wood samples were found to have suffered no measurable changes in mass or signs of decomposition or damage. "Wood's ability to withstand these conditions astounded us," said Koji Murata, head of the project.

After these tests, samples were sent to the ISS, where they were subjected to exposure trials for almost a year before being brought back to Earth. Again they showed little signs of damage, a phenomenon that Murata attributed to the fact that there is no oxygen in space which could cause wood to burn, and no living creatures to cause it to rot.
The article adds that if it performs well in space, "then the door could be opened for the use of wood as a construction material for more satellites."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Nintendo's Satellaview, a Japan-only satellite add-on for the Super Famicom, is a rich target for preservationists because it was the home to some of the most ephemeral games ever released. That includes a host of content for Nintendo's own games, including F-Zero. That influential Super Nintendo (Super Famicom in Japan) racing title was the subject of eight weekly broadcasts sent to subscribing Japanese homes in 1996 and 1997, some with live "Soundlink" CD-quality music and voiceovers. When live game broadcasts were finished, the memory cartridges used to store game data would report themselves as empty, even though they technically were not. Keeping that same 1MB memory cartridge in the system when another broadcast started would overwrite that data, and there were no rebroadcasts.

As reported by Matthew Green at Press the Buttons (along with Did You Know Gaming's informative video), data from some untouched memory cartridges was found and used to re-create some of the content. Some courses, part of a multi-week "Grand Prix 2" event, have never been found, despite a $5,000 bounty offering and extensive effort. And yet, remarkably, the 10 courses in those later broadcasts were reverse-engineered, using a VHS recording, machine learning tools, and some manual pixel-by-pixel re-creation. The results are "north of 99.9% accurate," according to those who crafted it and exist now as a mod you can patch onto an existing F-Zero ROM. [...] Their work means that, 25 years later, a moment in gaming that was nearly lost to time and various corporate currents has been, if not entirely restored, brought as close as is humanly (and machine-ably) possible to what it once was.

Nvidia blog: Every country needs to own the production of their own intelligence, NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang told attendees Monday at the World Governments Summit in Dubai. Huang, who spoke as part of a fireside chat with the UAE's Minister of AI, His Excellency Omar Al Olama, described sovereign AI -- which emphasizes a country's ownership over its data and the intelligence it produces -- as an enormous opportunity for the world's leaders. "It codifies your culture, your society's intelligence, your common sense, your history -- you own your own data," Huang told Al Olama during their conversation, a highlight of an event attended by more than 4,000 delegates from 150 countries.

"We completely subscribe to that vision," Al Olama said. "That's why the UAE is moving aggressively on creating large language models and mobilizing compute." Huang's appearance in the UAE comes as the Gulf State is moving rapidly to transform itself from an energy powerhouse into a global information technology hub. Dubai is the latest stop for Huang in a global tour that has included meetings with leaders in Canada, France, India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam over the past six months. The Middle East is poised to reap significant benefits from AI, with PwC projecting a $320 billion boost to the region's economy by 2030.

Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC announced plans to build a second chip factory in Japan by the end of 2027, bringing total investment in its Japan venture to more than $20 billion. "Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co announced plans in 2021 to build a $7 billion chip plant in Kumamoto in southern Japan's Kyushu," notes Reuters. From the report: In a statement, TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker, said its majority-owned unit Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing in Kumamoto would build a second fabrication plant, or fab, in response to rising customer demand. The second fab will begin construction by the end of this year and with both factories the site is expected to have total monthly capacity of more than 100,000 12-inch wafers to be used for automotive, industrial, consumer and high performance computing-related applications, TSMC said. The capacity plan may be further adjusted based upon customer demand, it added.

TSMC's expansion in Kyushu is central to the Japanese government's efforts to rebuild the country's position as a leading chip manufacturing centre and ensure the stable supply of chips amid trade tensions between the United States and China. The decision to build a second fab is a vote of confidence by TSMC in Japan where construction of the first fab has run smoothly and which, Reuters has reported, it sees as a source of diligent workers with a government that is easy to deal with.