In a time of heightened scrutiny on the memory supply chain, overnight the world’s largest chipmaker, Taiwan’s TSMC, is reportedly building out a domestic DRAM supply chain in Taiwan amid a severe global memory shortage, bringing in Winbond as a partner, UDN reported.

TSMC and Winbond are collaborating on a localized DRAM supply chain using 3D wafer-on-wafer (WoW) stacking technology, where Winbond would supply DRAM memory wafers to be stacked with TSMC’s logic wafers. The move is designed to keep critical memory production close to home while feeding the demand of AI hardware.

Key details:

• The tech: WoW uses hybrid bonding to directly stack logic chips and memory wafers vertically, creating tens of thousands to millions of micro copper interconnects — shortening data transmission distance versus traditional packaging, with higher bandwidth, lower latency, and better power efficiency. It’s positioned as critical for AI servers, HPC, and edge AI devices.
• Why Winbond: TSMC’s WoW memory wafers have historically relied on Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron. With global memory supply extremely tight and those three running near full capacity, TSMC is diversifying. Winbond’s long track record in niche/specialty DRAM and NOR Flash, plus its mature 12-inch wafer production, high yield, and quality control, made it a fit.
• Strategic angle: This is framed as TSMC cultivating a domestic supply chain to strengthen Taiwan’s self-sufficiency in AI chip components — elevating Winbond from a peripheral player to a core part of the global AI supply chain, and reinforcing Taiwan’s overall position in AI semiconductor manufacturing.
• Caveat: Winbond declined to comment on specific clients/deals, and TSMC had not responded by press time — this is sourced to unnamed industry insiders, not confirmed by either company.

Some more technical color on what Winbond actually brings: 

• Several outlets cite Winbond’s proprietary architecture called CUBE (Customized Ultra-Bandwidth Elements), described as purpose-built for WoW integration, with scalable memory density from 256Mb to 8Gb per die. Crypto Briefing
• Why now? Well, as everyone knows by now, the memory pricing backdrop is extreme, if not outright absurd, with all demand crushed except for (off-balance sheet_ debt-funded data centers .One analysis flagged that DRAM prices rising nearly 75% in early 2026, and with the memory crunch expected to persist until at least 2027, that’s the real catalyst pushing TSMC to diversify away from Samsung/SK Hynix/Micron.
• This is not Winbond’s first rodeo on this front. Separately, Winbond has also been building a DRAM foundry partnership with Elpida targeting graphics DRAM, not cutting-edge HBM — framed by one analyst as a resilience/diversification move for Taiwan’s supply chain rather than a direct challenge to Korean HBM dominance. 

That said, multiple outlets note that neither company has gone on record so far  “Specific details surrounding the TSMC-Winbond collaboration remain sparse, as neither company has issued significant announcements regarding the project”, consistent with the UDN piece’s framing that Winbond declined comment and TSMC hadn’t responded by press time.
If you want, I can pull Winbond’s stock reaction (2344.TW) specifically, or draft this into a quick ZeroHedge-style piece tying it to the broader memory-shortage/CXMT thread you’ve been tracking.

TSM gained 3.60% on June 29, with traders attributing the move directly to the Winbond partnership news. 

China imposed new export controls Monday on 40 Japanese entities it says are contributing to the country’s “remilitarization,” as tensions with Tokyo rise.

China’s Commerce Ministry on Monday placed 20 Japanese entities, including the National Institute for Defense Studies and research centers for ground, naval, and air systems, as well as multiple divisions of Mitsubishi Corporation, on a control list, which prohibits Chinese and foreign exporters from selling to them dual-use items made in China. Dual-use items can be used for both civilian and military purposes. 

Additionally, 20 other entities were added to a watch list requiring enhanced licensing scrutiny for dual-use items; it includes Mitsui E&S, which makes engines and other equipment for ships, divisions of Fujitsu and Komatsu corporation, drone maker Terra Drone Corporation, nuclear fuel processors, and multiple units of OKI Electric Industry,. 

Domestic exporters, as well as overseas organizations or individuals, are prohibited from transferring Chinese-origin dual-use items to the named entities, according to the statement, adding that any ongoing activities must stop immediately.

Chinese companies exporting to these firms will be required to apply for special licenses, submit risk assessment reports on the Japanese companies and written pledges that the dual-use items will not be used for military purposes.

Relations between Beijing and Tokyo have been increasingly tense since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year implied Japan could intervene if China used military force against Taiwan, an island democracy China claims as its own.

Meanwhile, Japan has accelerated its military expansion, especially by adding offensive capabilities, which Beijing has condemned.

The export controls are “entirely justified, reasonable and lawful,” the Chinese Commerce Ministry said, adding they are aimed at “firmly deterring Japan’s reckless pursuit of ‘new militarism.’”

“We hope Japan will recognize its mistakes, reverse its wrongful course, genuinely reflect on its past and return to the right track,” it added.

Japan did not reflect and instead the country’s top government spokesperson called the curbs as “unacceptable and extremely regrettable,” while calling on Beijing to retract the measures.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara said Monday that Japan would take necessary countermeasures after thoroughly assessing the curbs and their impact.

Under Takaichi, Japan’s military has been equipped with more offensive capabilities, including long-range missiles on remote islands. Exports of lethal weapons are now allowed under a new policy. Japan will revise its defense and security documents by December, which could further increase its defense budget.

On Monday, Japan’s Ground Self-Defense Force announced the deployment of a Type-12 missile launcher on the southernmost remote island of Minamitorishima, an apparent response to China’s growing activity expanding into the Pacific.

In February, China put an initial 20 Japanese companies on an export control list and 20 others on a watch list. The Commerce Ministry said that since then, “instead of reflecting on its past and correcting its course, Japan has continued down the wrong path” by accelerating remilitarization, deploying offensive weapons and launching missiles.

The ministry emphasized the curbs affect only a small number of Japanese entities, and the measures only apply to dual-use items. “They do not affect normal Sino-Japanese economic and trade exchanges, and honest and law-abiding Japanese entities have absolutely nothing to worry about.” 

The measures function more as a “diplomatic message” as Beijing steps up its pressure on Tokyo, said George Chen, partner for Greater China at the advisory firm The Asia Group.

“From Beijing’s perspective, Japan has not taken meaningful actions to stabilize bilateral ties,” Chen said. “And concerns are growing in China about deeper defense cooperation between Japan, the United States, and potentially other partners.”

In the short term, Japan–China relations will likely remain fragile “and at risk of slipping further if neither side moves to arrest the downward trend,” he added.

For Beijing, the issue of Taiwan is particularly sensitive. China considers the self-ruled island its own territory, to be retaken by force if necessary, and has increased military pressure on it.

Earlier this month, the Chinese coast guard conducted patrols east of Taiwan in what state media described a “pointed warning” to Japan and the Philippines following an announcement that the countries would discuss their maritime boundaries in waters that Beijing views as its own.

The United Kingdom, Germany and France in a rare joint statement last week condemned Chinese activities in the waters east of Taiwan, adding they opposed any change of the status quo between China and Taiwan.

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Correspondent Simons Chase insightfully summarized this dynamic: Privatize the Gains, Socialize the Costs.

In my post Five Dynamics That Make Sense of an Increasingly Chaotic World, #3 is the distribution of risk, costs and consequences to a diffused populace while concentrating the gains into the pockets of insiders/owners:

Those seeking to reduce their private risks and increase their private gains seek to concentrate the gains generated by control structures and distribute the risks and costs to others. Pull the strings that diffuse the costs and risks over a large populace and gather the gains into the hands of the insiders that manage the control structure, typically some form of monopoly, either public or private, or a fusion of public-private rackets.

So corporations face low risks while the gains are extremely enticing. This diffusion of risk and concentration of potential gains establishes perverse incentives to increase extractive, exploitive, well-hidden rackets that impoverish and immiserate the many, but in doses small enough to avoid triggering push-back.

In a system that concentrates gains and diffuses risk, the “rational actor” seeks to maximize rackets that distribute impoverishment and immiseration to the many in small doses over time that attract little attention and are not significant enough to trigger an emotionally potent resistance.

Correspondent Simons Chase (x.com/slchase and Selflet.ai) insightfully summarized this dynamic: Privatize the Gains, Socialize the Costs. Here is Simons’ explanation:

“Junk food is a kind of leveraged recapitalization — short-term gains privatized, long-term costs socialized as horrific health outcomes: pay a little now and a shortened, diseased life later. Dan Munro folded that framing into his Forbes piece tying roughly a trillion dollars a year in U.S. healthcare spending to sugar: Sugar Linked To $1 Trillion In U.S. Healthcare Spending (forbes.com, 2013). The mechanism is the point: privatize the gain, socialize the cost. Once you see it, you see it everywhere.

The receipt is real–Credit Suisse put 30%-40% of U.S. healthcare spending at the feet of excess sugar, and the 2012 Global Burden of Disease report found obesity a bigger global threat than hunger. That last fact is the whole thesis in a line, and I put it on X more recently: obesity is a form of starvation — understand that, and you grasp the U.S. economy:

Abundance, not scarcity, is the adversary now. The economy has already filed the invoice: the top employer in most states flipped from manufacturing to health care in a single generation. We stopped making things and started billing the disease. The damage became the GDP.

Debt is the same recapitalization run on the whole economy–today’s abundance privatized, tomorrow’s cost socialized onto a future that didn’t vote. And the defining project of my lifetime has been that operation run on foreign policy: borrowed against what we couldn’t pay for at home, the costs socialized onto people far from the ledger, each chapter sold as help.

AI is simply the newest instance, and the most intimate. Cheap, fluent, frictionless cognition now; the homogenization bill later. The engagement is privatized; the flattening of the culture is socialized onto all of us– and, exactly as you say, nobody notices the loss because nobody knows how to look for it.

Thank you, Simons, for this illumination.

Regarding the future of AI, my critiques and concerns can be found in my Essays on AI. Simons proposes a more productive future than Big Tech is selling, one of AI becoming a technology of individual agency that is radically decentralized rather than the Big Tech model of radically centralized AI in a corporate-state control structure. Here is Simons’ vision of the future of AI:

Where I part from the despair is only on the cure, not the diagnosis. The averaging is the default, not the destiny. The answer at every level is the same: nutrient-dense over processed, particular over average, owned over administered. I think AI’s future is tribal and human-designed: many particular intelligences, not one central utility that privatizes the profit and socializes the mediocrity. What I’m building is a small argument for that. All I really hope for is the freedom to deploy it — and not another ‘we’re here to help.'”

Thank you, Simons, for this alternative lens. My vision of a positive future for AI starts with radical decentralization optimizing individual agency and then moving up the “truly intelligent” scale to AI refusing to waste resources on make-work waste is growth:

My book Investing In Revolution is available at a 10% discount ($18 for the paperback, $24 for the hardcover and $8.95 for the ebook edition). Introduction (free). Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com. Subscribe to my Substack for free.

There’s no more excuses.  Filming for James Gunn’s Supergirl summer blockbuster started in January of 2025, with most of the US celebrating the defeat of woke politics and the downfall of DEI.  There was no confusion in 2025; woke is dead.  Gunn was well aware and decided to make an insufferable feminist “girl boss” movie anyway. 

In other words, his failure is his own fault.  Either due to hubris, stupidity, or both. 

Initial projections for Supergirl a month ago hovered around $70 million for opening weekend.  These estimates were already low and the panic within Warner Bros. was palpable.  DC Studios was already on its ass for the less than stellar performance of Gunn’s Superman, which was supposed to revitalize the comic book movie landscape. 

After theaters took their 50% cut of the receipts, Superman barely broke even on paper, though initial data suggests it fell actually short by $42 million before other indirect revenues were counted.  This was, once again, largely due to Gunn’s moronic insertion of immigration politics into discussion, which repelled audiences. 

If Superman couldn’t bring in enough fans to make real money, then Supergirl had no chance. Then, the lead actress opened her mouth and started talking, and this was the last nail in the coffin for the release.  After Milly Alcock started spewing feminist nonsense in interviews and attacking fans, it was all over. 

“It definitely made me aware that simply existing as a woman in that space is something that people comment on,” she told Vanity Fair in an interview a few months before release. “We have become very comfortable having this weird ownership of women’s bodies. I can’t really stop them. I can only be myself.”

Alcock went on to accuse fans of more sexism when they criticized here strange comments.  She then later suggested that Supergirl is LGBT in an effort to virtue signal for gay pride month. 

Supergirl is bisexual, apparently. “She’d probably go both ways,” says Milly Alcock. pic.twitter.com/s8zqHyTeJs

— Libby Emmons (@libbyemmons) June 23, 2026

Clearly, people are tired of leftists inserting LGBT sexual preferences into every film and TV show, because Supergirl’s numbers plummeted not long after Alcock’s interviews.  The flick only brought in $38 million on opening weekend – Half of the expected revenues.  And, keep in mind, theaters still have to take their profits. 

The movie will need to make approximately $500 million to break even, which sets up Supergirl as possibly the biggest failure in DC movie history.  Beyond Alcock and Gunn, the production was also constructed around the framework provided by a writer with no experience (Ana Noguiera) and referenced a comic run by Tom King, a former CIA officer and leftist.  Anyone with any sense could have seen the disaster coming a hundred miles away.

New clip from DC Studios’ ‘SUPERGIRL.’

Releasing in theaters on June 26. pic.twitter.com/Ip813dV8fK

— The Hollywood Handle (@HollywoodHandle) June 5, 2026

The lesson is this:  Leftists never learn.  Until the majority of people in Hollywood finally age out or get replaced with smarter (and more conservative) writers, there is little chance of a dramatic return to form.  They will continue to double down until the industry completely collapses.  Or, until a new and alternative industry rises to fill the vacuum. 

In the meantime, Get Woke, Go Broke dominates popular culture.  The progressive invasion is not gone, but they are certainly in decline.   

An early morning storm ripped through Highmore, South Dakota, about 220 miles east of Rapid City, producing a reported 131 mph wind gust that, if sustained, would fall within Category 4 hurricane strength on the Saffir-Simpson scale.

The South Dakota Mesonet station at Highmore has reported winds of 76 gusting to 131 mph at 6:25 am. NWS has issued a Civil Emergency Message for the area. https://t.co/SWdEBPXsud pic.twitter.com/WofSvWUnF9

— South Dakota Mesonet (@SDMesonet) June 29, 2026

Local KELOLAND meteorologists Scot Mundt and Brian Karstens were absolutely stunned by the wind speed, which reached 131 mph.

The violent straight-line winds toppled grain silos, damaged infrastructure, and knocked over large wind turbines.

Unbelievable damage to a wind farm near Highmore, South Dakota after this morning’s storm. #sdwx pic.twitter.com/Uucyapxfej

— Jakob McMillin (@McMillinWx) June 29, 2026

Great shots from John Hall in Highmore, SD showing the aftermath of severe winds. The storm damaged grain bins, left debris in the streets, and even flipped a camper, with winds reportedly reaching up to 131 mph. #SDwx pic.twitter.com/xkEbVDP2F6

— YallBot (@OfficialYallbot) June 29, 2026

Oh my gosh. Very significant damage in Highmore, South Dakota from this morning’s severe MCS that moved through with wind gusts up to 131 mph.

📸 Amanda Brown via Facebook pic.twitter.com/xxgUyRQUqi

— Alex Resel 📸 (@aresel_) June 29, 2026

The severity of the storm system is now under review by the National Weather Service for potential state or national wind gust records.

By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com

People in the Philippines are flocking to install solar power ​on rooftops and escape the burden of soaring electricity prices, making it the world’s biggest spender on solar panels since ‌the war in Iran started. 

Top Philippines power distributor Meralco has raised prices by 10% since the Middle East conflict began in late February. Now, a median household spends around 12% of monthly income on electricity, assuming it consumes 200 kilowatt-hours, approximately the monthly average for three people. 

Amid record-beating electricity prices and a supply crunch in fossil fuels, many Filipinos have opted to install rooftop solar panels over the past three months.

The spending on solar panels in the Southeast Asian country, which has been one of the worst-hit Asian economies in the energy supply crisis triggered by the Middle East conflict, topped $407 million between March 1 and May 31, per China customs data compiled by Reuters.

The Netherlands was the biggest spender with $1.1 billion on solar panels but it is a major transshipment hub for solar equipment imports and re-exports, so it’s not really part of the analysis of which country has spent the most.

After the Philippines comes Pakistan, another Asian economy severely hit by the halt of LNG supply from the Middle East. Pakistan has managed to negotiate with Iran some LNG cargoes form Qatar to exit the Persian Gulf in recent weeks. But the energy crisis in Pakistan has also prompted a rush to solar power installations.

Pakistan’s solar boom was already evident before the Middle East crisis.

Distributed solar drove a 21% increase in Pakistan’s national electricity demand in two years, clean energy think tank Ember said in a report last week.

A total of 27 gigawatts (GW) of distributed solar was deployed in just two years, the same as all the operating coal, gas, and oil plants built in Pakistan ever, Ember said.

In the Philippines, rooftop solar has nearly doubled over the past 12 months, according to a separate Ember analysis from the end of May.

Philergy German Solar, a Manila-based ​installer, received more than 2-1/2 times the number of customer enquiries in the first five months of this year compared to last year. At one point it ‌fielded 3,000 ⁠inquiries a day, according to managing partner Jochen Staudter. Customers are deciding to buy “much faster than before,” Staudter said. “Demand will continue to be driven by high electricity prices.”

In two years, distributed solar capacity could nearly triple to 3,500 megawatts (MW), matching the current size of the Philippines’ utility-scale solar fleet, as loan payback times shrink to 3.1 years from 4 years, said Alnie Demoral, analyst at energy think tank Ember. Solar accounts for under 4% of national ​power consumption, government data shows.

The Philippines is China’s second-largest solar panel export market in 2026, only behind the transshipment hub the Netherlands, suggesting significant rooftop pick-up in the Southeast Asian country. China exported over 3,000 MW of solar panels to the Philippines in March and April alone, according to Ember’s data.

Still, the solar boom in the Philippines faces challenges, including high upfront costs for Filipino households and supply chain issues.

Spanish daily newspaper ABC.es reports that some of the worst quake damage in Venezuela is concentrated in Caraballeda and Catia La Mar, where high-rise towers built under the Great Housing Mission Venezuela, or Gran Misión Vivienda Venezuela (GMVV), were reduced to rubble.

The Chávez-era socialist housing program is now facing scrutiny after the outlet noted, “The explanation given by engineers and construction specialists is that low-quality materials were used in the Chavista Housing Mission, without supervision and without applying anti-seismic standards.” 

GMVV was later expanded by the socialist Maduro regime without regard for the quality of building materials or anti-seismic standards, leaving only a handful of the 193 buildings in one housing complex in quake-ravaged Catia La Mar standing. 

The devastating earthquakes in Venezuela exposed exactly how the socialist government built housing for their people. Look at this video from La Guaira.

The buildings in the Misión Vivienda program were constructed using expanded polystyrene (EPS) panels coated with a thin layer… pic.twitter.com/N4qLX7W3Xa

— Maila Maria Rosa (@MailaMariaRosa) June 28, 2026

“None of the official buildings would withstand an engineering inspection, much less an earthquake of magnitude 7.5, like the one last Wednesday,” the outlet stated.

Según múltiples reportes independientes y testimonios de las zonas afectadas confirman que #HechoEnSucialismo es: muerte, destrucción y dolor

Las propiedades de la #MisionVivienda son las que mayormente se han caído o sufrido daños sustanciales (si no se han derrumbado)

Una… pic.twitter.com/DT0AMEuNUi

— Bonyuet (@DBonyuet) June 28, 2026

Transparency Venezuela has previously alleged widespread corruption in the socialist housing program, including unfinished or failed projects linked to foreign contractors from Chavismo-aligned countries.

The outlet said many of these social housing projects “collapsed like sandcastles,” and the head of the Chilean rescue teams on the ground told AFP News last Friday that there is “little chance of finding people alive.”

A satellite image reveals the collapse of five residential buildings of the Housing Mission in Venezuela 🇻🇪 pic.twitter.com/mBQRQEThPA

— BowTiedMara (@BowTiedMara) June 27, 2026

The collapse of Venezuela’s GMVV is becoming another case study in how socialist corruption fails at delivering even the most basic needs for the people. What was sold by the left-wing government as housing for all now appears to have produced high-rise death traps, built with low-quality materials, weak oversight and inadequate seismic standards. 

The result is grim: 1,500 dead, 50,000 missing…

Yet another example of socialist governance has instead become a symbol of state failure and corruption.