Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock

ReptileMan

Do you remember this quote from wheel of time? "Let the lord of chaos rule" ...

trollbridge

Aren’t there huge stockpiles of helium in the US? I can buy party sized tanks at Target or big tanks at the usual places like welding supply places.

lpcvoid

Great timing that the US recently sold its strategic helium supply.

coreyh14444

Remember all the e/acc people telling us to vote for Trump? Some mea-culpas are in order.

breppp

Qatar is probably intentionally shutting down production of gas and oil in order to pressure the US to stop, independently of Iranian attacks. In that respect they may be bombed by Iran but they have the same interests

spiderfarmer

Lindsay Graham has an easy solution to this unnecessary conflict: send your sons and daughters. This whole administration is such a fiasco.

emsign

Iran will make AI go pop.

arunc

So the RAM prices are going to skyrocket again?

nDRDY

Somewhat tangential question - for the "Just Stop Oil" folks - is it the extraction of oil that is the problem, or the burning of it? If the former, then we have an opportunity to investigate more renewable sources.

abeppu

I remember hearing somewhere on this site that medical imaging got pretty good at building systems that recycle helium. Does chip manufacturing not do this or are the losses at their scale are still large enough that you need a substantial constant supply?

etchalon

It's almost like war is a bad thing.

randerson

I've developed a new fear of my 2025 desktop PC being damaged by a power surge or something, because it would cost at least $2K more to replace than I paid for it, assuming I can even find parts now. Compared to the rest of my adult life when I used to secretly pray for something to fail so I would have a reason to upgrade.

CrzyLngPwd

This is, according to Hegseth, just something they planned for, since they knew what was going to happen.

hbrav

Tech divers are also probably gonna be having a Bad Time. Helium mixes are already pretty expensive, I assume this will make it far worse.

elzbardico

Thanks DJT, I am tired of winning, can we become losers again? /s

cyanydeez

The people trump relies on to make his decisions (if he's making them) include tons of far right accelerationists; so they'd be happy to watch modern society fall.

CommanderData

Completely self inflicted at the request of Israel.

sillystuff

The US just finished divesting itself from its strategic helium reserve in 2024 due to the "Helium Stewardship Act of 2013"[1] But, now we have a strategic bitcoin reserve. [1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/527

backprop1989

Step 1: Put the helium in a blimp Step 2: Fly around the straight and over to Taiwan Step 3: Pump it into the chip factory There you go, solved it.

ordu

It is not just oil and helium supply chains, it is nitrogen fertilizers also, and in a season when they are needed the most: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/nitrogen-ammonia-a...