The Asianometry Podcast

Gene therapies are the most expensive drugs in the world. And that is because producing a viral vector for "in vivo" gene therapy is arguably the most complicated process ever attempted at scale in biopharmaceuticals. In a prior video, I talked about the Chinese hamster's revolutionary impact on scaling antibody manufacturing. Today, let's double-click on that (hate this phrase). In this video, we look at the history and complex manufacturing issues of viral vector gene therapy.

Stop me if you've heard this one before. A big computer costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Running a special programming language fine-tuned for big AI programs...and these programs can replace human experts, process military information, and do advanced math. Sounds familiar, no? Except this all happened four decades ago. In the 1980s, a new industry of cult AI computers emerged amidst an AI boom. The largest of which generated millions of dollars, before it all came crashing down. For today's video...some say it is the finest programming environment ever created...and that its users only gave it up when PC silicon got 50,000 times faster...all we know is...it's called a LISP machine!

In May 2025, I rode along with the research firm SemiAnalysis on a datacenter information field trip in Malaysia and Singapore. They did not sponsor this video. I paid my own way. We drove out to actual data center sites. We went through some impressive security, and sat down with the operators to talk about their jobs and the industry. And to an extent, we went inside. I was allowed to photograph a few things. In other places, I can only do a quick and ugly sketch. The datacenter boom in Southeast Asia is hot. But challenges loom due to shortages in certain resources, as well as world geopolitics. In today's video, some first-hand notes and observations from the heart of the data center boom in Southeast Asia.

In May 2025, rice prices in Japan hit 4,233 yen or about $30 per five kilograms - about twice as high as they were a year ago. Prices have gone up for over 15 weeks in a row. In response, the Japanese government released 600,000 tons of rice from its emergency food stockpiles - usually stored for natural disasters like earthquakes. But prices remain high. Supermarkets in Japan are announcing they will sell rice from other countries like South Korea and...even gasp America! Yes, I am talking about that most blasphemous of rice strains: Calrose. Japan is nearly 100% self sufficient in rice. On the surface, that is something to be proud of. But not so much when you consider the system built around that number. In today's video, we return to my favorite carb, and dive into Japan's ongoing rice price crisis.

In January 2025, ESKOM, South Africa's electricity monopoly, announced its first round of load-shedding in over ten months. Load shedding basically meaning rolling blackouts to prevent the grid from collapsing. 2024 had been a good year (relatively). Just 83 days of load-shedding. Not too bad after 332 days in 2023, and over 200 days of power cuts in 2022. ESKOM is one of South Africa's biggest companies. It is also arguably its most important. And it is in shambles. In this video, the story of a state-owned electricity monopoly that triggered an energy crisis.

For decades, modern agriculture depended on fertilizing nitrates mined out of a South American desert. These mines were the world's only such sources of nitrates. So valuable that three countries went to war over them. These nitrate riches, monopolized by foreigners, were wiped away thanks to one of the most famous chemical processes in history. But it took longer than you think. In this video, the glorious nitrates mining boom, the countries who bled for it, the men who monopolized it, and the technologies that ended it.

For nearly forty years, Chemically Amplified Resists or CARs (say it separately) dominated the semiconductor industry. But technological changes present opportunities for major industrial shifts. And the introduction of EUV is perhaps the biggest technological change in the past 10 years. EUV's rise has opened the door to a perhaps-revolutionary new photoresist, and two very interesting new players supporting them. In this video, we talk about the new metal oxide and dry resists, developed for the EUV era and beyond.

Per Bloomberg, in 2024 lithium-ion battery pack prices fell 20% to $115 per kilowatt-hour. It is the biggest price cut since 2017. At these prices, it is cheaper to buy Chinese even with tariffs of 25%, 35% and perhaps 120%. Central to this trend are the price and technology developments going on in a specific type of battery: Lithium Ion Iron Phosphate or LFP. LFP batteries were once seen as cheap and low-end, suffering fundamental chemistry weaknesses. Leave it to China to engineer their way around such limits. In this video, one of the most revolutionary cost curves in energy history. China and the LFP.

A femtosecond is one quadrillionth of a second. Or to put it another way. A femtosecond is one millionth of one billionth of a second. A femtosecond is to a second what a second is to 32 million years. There are more femtoseconds in a single second than there are hours passed since the Big Bang. Fact, eight times more. In a femtosecond, light travels just 300 nanometers. The femtosecond laser shoots pulses at femtosecond intervals. And that lets us observe fast-moving phenomena in physics, chemistry and more as they happen. And out in the real world, the femtosecond laser has been used in things as varied as nuclear fusion to semiconductors to LASIK. It sounds impossible. In today's video, the femtosecond laser breakthrough.

In March 1974, the French government unveiled the Messmer plan. It called for a massive nuclear energy construction spree to raise nuclear's share of electricity generation in France from 8% to over 70% by 1985. The relevant phrase was "all nuclear" (le tout-nucléaire). The results were undeniable. Amidst an oil crisis in 1973, France relied on imported oil for 67% of its total energy needs. And nuclear delivered. By 2000, nuclear supplied nearly 80% of France's electricity and nearly 40% of its total energy. In this video, one of the greatest runs of nuclear energy construction in world history.

For decades, semiconductor fabs tolerated—and even expected—bad yields. Less than 50%, sometimes as low as 10%. Credible die yield data is rare, but here's a market analysis from the late 1980s for the US Trade Representative during the US-Japan semiconductor dispute. It implies that when American and Japanese firms began 16K DRAM in 1978, yields were about 2%. Laughably low, but expected. And they stayed low. By 1984, US 16K DRAM yield hit 36%. Japan: 48%—better, still bad. Six years later! Now look at TSMC's N5/N4 node, about 4–5 years old. Trade secrets, but N4 yields are around 80%. What's going on? 6-micron process vs. 4-nanometer. The latter is far harder. Yet we're hitting 80–90% yields. Is it a conspiracy? No—the fabs opened their third eyes. With new tools, they began inspecting and improving. In this video: how automated inspection tools revolutionized chip fabrication.

While attending an ASML presentation at SEMICON Korea, I noticed a tidbit on one of the slides. A key part of their future EUV roadmap has been growing the power source to 800 watts or more. But it had not been super clear to me how they were going to do that, other than maybe raising the speed of the tin pellets. Then I saw the slide and it showed something new, at least to me. Three laser pulses rather than two. Now how about that? No, this is not an Onion article. This looks to be real. In this video, I want to talk about lasers and EUV light sources. And how three is better than two.

Last year during my trip to Silicon Valley, I was invited to visit a company called PsiQuantum. When you think about quantum computing, your mind might conjure up those chandeliers. Qubits plunged to super cold temperatures. PsiQuantum is working on something a little different. Quantum computing using photons. In this video, a form of quantum compute with intriguing possibilities. Does it “work” like silicon does today? Is quantum compute really here? I can't really answer those questions in this video. But we can explore the ideas and the ideas are certainly mind-bending.

What was the world's top selling drug in 2023? Maybe the magic weight losing drug semaglutide, better known as Ozempic? Or the COVID vaccine perchance? Nope. 2023's top selling drug was an antibody, Keytruda, with about $25 billion in sales. $27 billion projected for 2024. In fact, five of the top ten best selling drugs in 2023 were antibodies. Antibody therapies revolutionized medicine. We have long known they can. The problem has always been how to make them the right way and at industrial scale. Today it is done with the help of a hamster. Or rather its cells. In this video, the incredible story of the hamster that revolutionized medicine. This is one of my favorite videos of the year.

Vitamins are organic molecules that we need to survive. You do not need a lot of them, but if you go without them for too long then deficiencies result. And then you are going to be in for a bad time. Science helped us discover the magical life-saving properties of these vitamins. Engineering helped us scale and bring them everywhere. And cartels helped a few shadowy companies monopolize them for profit. This really happened. In this video, we look at vitamins and the secret, international cabal manipulating their prices for almost a decade.

Carlos Slim wasn't the first ever Mexican to be the world's richest man. That honor should probably go to Antonio de Obregón y Alcocer, the half-Mexican who discovered and ran the greatest silver mine of all time: the Valenciana Mine. That mine, by itself, was responsible for 60% of all the silver produced in the 18th century. So Slim has some ways to go. But I have always been fascinated at Mexico's wealth inequality. How did a country with 46.8 million people living in poverty also end up hosting one of the world's richest men? The answer is that they sold him a monopoly. In this video, the birth, development, and eventual sale of Mexico's telephone industry.

I have been thinking about tariffs recently. No reason why, just interested. And while reading, I came across a series of interesting papers by economists Michael Clemens and Jeffrey Williamson. They explore what looks like an economic paradox. Up until World War I, the countries of Latin America were the most protectionist in the world, with some of its highest tariff rates. East Asia on the other hand - for reasons we will discuss later - had tariffs just a fraction as high. Yet during these decades, the Latin American countries grew faster than the Asian ones. Before World War I, one might argue that if you wanted faster economic growth, you needed high tariffs. Then things changed. In this video, high tariffs in Latin America. Low tariffs in Asia. One works the other doesn't, right? Time, context, and composition matter.

When the semiconductor industry first started on EUV lithography, almost everyone believed that the optics would be the hardest things to do. Wavefront error—deviations of a light wave from its ideal—comes from imperfections in mirrors and lenses. A good lens aims for lambda/10 error; EUV optics must hit lambda/50. With EUV's 13.5 nm wavelength, that's 260 picometers. For context, a water molecule is 275 pm wide. That's the total error budget—for the entire six-mirror system. Because errors add in quadrature, each mirror gets 106 pm rms. But mirrors double light deviation on reflection, so surface accuracy must be halved: 53 pm rms. That's the radius of a hydrogen atom. It is 20 times harder for an EUV system with six mirrors to achieve the same wavefront performance of a DUV system with 60 surfaces. In this video, we go back to the machine you guys all know and love (again) and the finest multilayer mirrors ever made in history.

Silicon's rapid rise in Radio Frequency or RF applications is a lesson in the power of Moore's Law. Over twenty years ago, all the parts of an RF front end module were made separately and integrated in a box. Silicon changed all that. And helped make possible today's slick and thin cellphones. In this video, the unexpected rise and quizzical future of RF-CMOS.

Social media is passing around an announcement that Huawei is testing a China-domestically developed EUV machine. This machine uses an EUV light source known as Laser-induced Discharge Plasma, or LDP. This is in contrast to ASML's method, which is called the Laser Produced Plasma or LPP method. It is claimed that LDP is much more efficient than LPP. Smaller, simpler and with better energy efficiency. Has ASML just been DeepSeek'd? I have been asked to speak on this via email and Twitter. I guess I have to do it. There is so little out there about how this machine works, so I am not going to speculate. But people have tried LDP before and we can talk about that. Feel free to extrapolate from there. In today's cope video, let's take a look at the Laser-Induced Discharge Plasma EUV light source.

Xiaomi roared onto global tech scene, raising the bar on what a Chinese smartphone should be. But when the phone market matured, the company executed a daring strategy shift. And then in March 2021, they announced they would make a freakin' EV. They did it. In this video, the rise of Xiaomi, its turnaround, its ride into EVs, and Apple.

The Soviet Union once controlled what was perhaps the world's mightiest fishing fleet. A wolf pack of ships moving around the world, fishing the nations' oceans and emptying them of life. The second half of the 20th century saw the industrialization of the fishing industry. And the Soviets were right in the thick of that. In this video, we talk the once-mighty Soviet fishing fleet and the industrialization of fishing.

Starting in the early 2000s, reports emerged of abnormal numbers of PC motherboards with leaking or even popping capacitors. A victim said in a newspaper interview that he turned on his computer one morning and suddenly heard a loud POP, like a distant firework. Other reports mention a weird, fishy smell in the air. The OS goes black and the computer fails to reboot. Most inexperienced people have no idea what to do except to bring it to a repair shop. Open it up, and inside you might find that a little cylinder on the board had swollen or even burst. This happened a lot. Why? In this video, we look at the infamous Capacitor Plague. We will never know what exactly happened, but let's try.

Today's leading edge chips get hot. Like really hot. And nowadays much work is being done to try and keep them from getting TOO hot. Fancy things like dipping the whole chip into water or oil. But why do the chips get hot? And how does that heat spread? Simple question right? In this video, we explore heat at nanometer scale. Easier video ever.

Remember how it used to be that we had to worry about whether we had a Verizon or AT&T iPhone? And that the AT&T iPhone was the one that you can use abroad? While the Verizon one was just for America? Wasn't that weird? Now we don't have to worry about that. Because when we moved to 4G, the world chose a single global wireless standard: LTE. After the bruising battles of 3G, 4G LTE's dominance came far more smoothly. In this video, we look at how 4G LTE won the wireless world.

The CHIPS Act is now disbursing awards and signing deals. One recent grant that caught my eye was awarded to the New Zealand-American space company Rocket Lab. The grant of up to $23.9 million is for the modernization and expansion of the company's fab in New Mexico, which produces space-grade solar cells. I have not heard of Rocket Lab until recently ... though it seems like the folks in the stock-trading world certainly have. But the idea of "space grade" solar cells was interesting to me. So this video is a simple one. Solar cells. In Space. Nuff said.

A few weeks ago a Patreon member sent me a paper titled "Axon-like active signal transmission" by a team at Texas A&M, Stanford, and Sandia National Laboratories. The paper discusses how the team recently transmitted a signal in an experiment. Big whoop, right? But the way they transmitted this signal is interesting because it mimics how neurons do it - self-amplification without additional devices. This result also involves a theory named the "edge of chaos". Now who can ignore that? In this brief video, I want to check out how they sent a signal through a wire.

In 1973, the legendary head of National Semiconductor, Charlie Sporck RIP, told analysts in Los Angeles that the Japanese were "coming down the pike". He was not wrong. In the nine years from 1975 to 1984, Japan doubled their share of the integrated circuit industry from 19% to 38%. Famously, by 1986, just three of eleven American DRAM memory makers were left still in business. But more than just numbers, Japan's rise struck fear in the very heart of American capitalism. It led the country to deeply reflect on how they conducted their own way of business. Looking back at it now, the hysteria is hard to believe. Were the Japanese really that good at semiconductors? No, but I can see why people thought so. In this video, we explore the question: Why was Japan so "good" at semiconductors?

In the late 1950s, Sweden briefly had the world's fastest computer. And then in the 1960s, they produced computers good enough to beat even the vaunted IBM. An amazing start. Sweden might have been the computing leader of Europe. But unfortunately, that did not last. In this video we look at the birth and glory of Swedish-made computers with the story of Datasaab. I promise to only make one IKEA joke.

Despite the area cuisine not being particularly known for wheat, Indonesia is the world's second biggest consumer of instant noodles. In 2023, they ate 14.5 billion servings according to the World Instant Noodles Association. 99% of its 285 million people have eaten it at one time or the other. There is another name on this list that kind of sticks out: Nigeria. What? Turns out - and this came as a surprise to me too - but the Indonesian noodle brand Indomie is super popular there. It is likely the single most popular packaged food in all of Africa. So popular it occasionally shows up in rap lyrics. How did that happen? In this video, we look at how a noodle brand from Indonesia became a sensation in Nigeria and the rest of Africa.

In late December 2024, Nissan announced a plan to merge with Honda. Well, they are calling it a merger. But it is more like a takeover. A shotgun marriage hastily arranged by the Japanese government to save a spiraling company left behind by the times. Again. Nissan's story has been up and down, up and down. But this latest ride down looks to finally be the end. In this video, a look at Nissan's tumble back down the stairs.

2G GSM was one of the most successful things to ever come out of Europe's technology sector, so when the next generation came around, everyone bought into the wireless hype. Billions of dollars spent buying spectrum, which led to a big crash and then a slow 3G rollout. Everyone wondered how the telecoms could ever make back the billions spent on a 3G investment. What could ever be big enough? In this video, we relive the 3G wars, the 3G crash, and the Jesus phone that brought them all back to life.

I apologize for adding yet another DeepSeek video to your video queue. During a trip to Tokyo last year, I was told that DeepSeek was the real deal. A cracked team, and perhaps the only ones of significance in China. Since then, I have annoyed the guys on Transistor Radio - our podcast with Dylan Patel and Doug O'Laughlin - into talking about it. Though there was nothing much to be said. In December 2024, DeepSeek released their V3 base model, which had impressive efficiency. A few people in AI were impressed. Then on January 22nd 2025, DeepSeek released their reasoning model, R1, which works kind of like OpenAI's o1 and o3 models. It takes extra compute time to "think" up a better answer. R1's release kicked everything off. The next day, the New York Times published an article on it, but focused mostly on the earlier V3's training costs.

Throughout most of Japan's automotive history, there were two companies in the lead: Toyota and Nissan. Everyone talks about Toyota. They are the unquestioned giant and the champion of Japanese cars. But what about Nissan? How did they come about? The history of Nissan Motor is a fascinating reflection of a world-famous industry. In today's video, the rise and first death of Nissan Motor.

South Korea's Yulsan Group (율산그룹) really speed-ran the rise and fall of a business empire. Founded in 1975 with nothing. Two years later, $165 million in export revenue. 14 subsidiaries, 8,000 employees. A year after that, bankrupt. In this video, the story of a chaebol. They never even made it five years.

Japan doesn't dominate semiconductor fabrication or lithography machines like it once did. But they still keep a mighty grip on the supply chain, particularly one very special chemical. The photoresist is often ignored, we just kind of offhandedly mention it at the end there. But without question, it is the most important chemical of the lithography process. Literally indispensable. Some 90% of this market is held by Japanese companies like JSR and Tokyo Ohka Kogyo, amongst others. One of those companies is today state-owned. In this video, we examine the many generations of photoresist used by the industry and Japan's low-key monopoly of it.

In 2006, Toshiba paid $5 billion for Westinghouse Electric. America's premier nuclear energy company, one of the founders of the industry. The acquisition and subsequent build of four new nuclear power reactors ruined them. A 140 year old company. One of Japan's proudest. Now torn apart. In this video, we look at perhaps the worst acquisition in Japanese corporate history.

In the thirty years before 1997, real GDP in the Republic of Korea grew an average of 8.1% a year. By this measure, South Korea grew faster than almost every other developing country at the time. A powerful economic engine drove this growth - a delicate coordination between the government and its business elites. In 1997, that engine went out of balance and drove the country into a ditch. In this video, we look at how South Korea and its Chaebol fell into economic crisis.

Today, Intel seeks to remake itself into a full-service foundry with Intel Foundry Services. But did you know that this is not their first foundry? Some 15 years ago, Intel had Intel Custom Foundry, or ICF. Most people today hardly remember ICF. Intel was so low-key about it. But at its peak it had a billion dollars in revenue contracts, strong support by the ecosystem, over a thousand multi-national employees. And ten plus customers - many won over from TSMC. In today's video, the rise and fall of Intel's first foundry. And the lessons to be learned for its second.

In 1992, Intel made about $5.8 billion in revenue and $1 billion in net income. By 1998, the company did $28 billion in revenue and $6.95 billion in net income. That year, Intel was the third most profitable company on the Fortune 500. Only Exxon Mobil and General Electric did better. The 1990s made Intel the world's richest and most powerful semiconductor company. And that was the problem. In this video, Intel at the peak. The most powerful semiconductor company of all time. Where do you go from there?

When people talk about night vision devices, they most often mean those reliant on image intensifier technology. These image intensifiers are tubes that receive and intensify ambient light by a significant factor. And inside those tubes is an extremely special glass plate, produced with a number of semiconductor-ish techniques. In this video, a brief look at the creation and evolution of night vision goggles.

Can you imagine it? Another year is at an end and it is remarkable to think that time has gone by so quickly. I have done a recap video for the past two years. Let's do it again. In today's video, I want to reflect on 2024 and the state of the channel. I am still actually working, haha. But a few minutes to reflect.

The world's sea levels are rising, and it will affect many people's lives. But it is those living on the low-lying atoll island nations of the Pacific and Indian oceans who arguably face the most significant disruption. Occasionally, we hear that the rising seas will overwhelm and drown these islands - forcing people to flee to new lands. Do rising seas really mean sinking islands? The evidence doesn't seem to say so. But that doesn't mean that everything is alright.

LNG is one of the world's fastest growing sources of energy. In 2023, according to the International Gas Union, the countries of the world imported over 400 million tons of LNG. The industry has been growing rapidly as of late. And this growth presents us with a cold opportunity.

AT&T was once America's biggest private company. In 1980, they had 1,040,000 employees. Including 7,400 Smiths. 5,880 Johnsons. 3,934 Williamses. Over 70% of American households had a telephone. 80% of those telephones came from the Bell System. 90% of the local calls made on those telephones were facilitated by an AT&T affiliated company. Almost 100% of the long distance calls were handled by AT&T itself, using its majestic nationwide network. How does such a company end? In today's video, we take the mightiest corporation the modern world has ever seen - I don't want to hear any meme comments about the East India Company - and break it up.

You have all heard of Moore's Law. But have you heard of Dennard's Law? IBM's Robert Dennard invented the 1 capacitor, 1 transistor concept that makes up DRAM. Such a thing sufficiently establishes a semiconductor legacy. But there is one more thing. The man defined a decade of semiconductor scaling. In this video, we explore a scaling trend that lifted an industry.

Nice day, isn't it? Talking about the weather in California was always a bit drab, because it never really changes. But I have been spoiled. After moving abroad, I find myself very dependent on weather predictions. Such a mundane thing, and yet so immensely important. Accurate weather predictions are a perfect example of the progress enabled by the computer. I script this while watching the rain outside. In this video, we explore how the computer revolutionized the weather forecast.

In the 1940s, penicillin was so hard to get, that scientists studied how to recycle it from patients' pee. It demonstrates how the human body does a poor job of metabolizing the antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals we ingest. It depends on the drug, but roughly speaking, 25-75% of the antibiotics we consume are excreted. Mostly as urine, due to the drugs' solubility. The average rate is 70%. So considering the thousands of tons of antibiotics we all consume each year, it makes me wonder. What are all those antibiotics in our wastewater doing? And what can we do about it?

The story of how Bell became AT&T has it all. Two fundamental patents filed by Alexander Graham Bell, giving one company an airtight monopoly on the next big thing. A historic, miraculously timed deal, taking out that company's only possible competitor. Then a brilliant, high-risk series of consolidations to put together a nationwide long-distance network. It came together to make the biggest company in modern history. In this video, we look back at how AT&T forged a monopoly.

There is a Buddhist phrase that goes: 苦海無邊，回頭是岸 It means, “The sea of bitterness is boundless; turning back is the shore.” Almost forty years ago in 1985, the folks at Intel found themselves on their own sea of bitterness. Millions of dollars in losses. Horrible manufacturing yields. An entire product category under siege. And then somehow, they turned back and found the shore. How? In this video, we look back at how Intel once saved its

5G marks yet another next wireless technology transition. One part of the transition promised immense bandwidth and super-fast speeds: Millimeter-Wave. It is a fascinating technology. But a few years into the 5G rollout, difficult technical and economic challenges remain. If semiconductors are black magic, then Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits, or RFICs, are the darkest of the dark arts. Let us take our first Defense Against the Dark Arts class. No cursing allowed. In this video, we dip our toes into RFICs and the 5G mmWave deployment.