I keep thinking about Sam Altman’s absurd alleged proposition to TSMC to have them build thirty-six new semiconductor fabs to the tune of seven trillion dollars. I had to make a whole another post about it because I don’t think you all realize how ludicrous a sum SEVEN TRILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS is.
Seven trillion dollars. Seven times ten to the power of twelve dollars. Seven thousand billion dollars. Seven billion dollars, if you’re old school or non-anglophone. That is a big ass number, but how big ass? Let’s put it in perspective.
- For starters, it’s pretty close to THE ENTIRE ANNUAL BUDGET OF THE US FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, $7.9 Tn for fiscal year 20251.
- It’s about two and half trillion dollars more than the GDP of Germany, or more than any country on earth other than United States and China. It’s approximately the entire nominal GDP of India and France put together2.
- It’s probably more than the total personal net worth of all the world’s billionaires combined3.
- It’s more than the total revenues of the top 17 Fortune 500 companies in 2024 (Walmart, Amazon, State Grid, Saudi Aramco, Sinopec Group, China National Petroleum, Apple, UnitedHealth Group, Berkshire Hathaway, CVS Health, Volkswagen, Exxon Mobil, Shell, China State Construction Engineering, Toyota Motor, McKesson and Alphabet)4.
- Sometimes postulated5 to be the most expensive peacetime construction project ever completed, the US interstate highway system cost about $114 billion6 or over $600 billion adjusted to 2024 dollars. I thought I’d keep throwing in other famous megaprojects until I hit seven trillion, but after the Apollo Program, the Space shuttle program, the Manhattan project, hurricane Katrina relief, Tōhoku earthquake relief including Fukushima nuclear power plant cleanup, Three Gorges Dam, and the Covid vaccines development I got bored of scrolling through Wikipedia’s list of Megaprojects and calculating inflation adjustments, though I was only at a little over one trillion. Let’s just say I’m pretty confident that if TSMC or anyone else actually decided to build seven trillion bucks’ worth of chip fabs, it would be the most expensive construction project in the history of mankind by a full order of magnitude.
In conclusion, a trillion is a fucking enormous figure and TSMC was probably right to dismiss Saltman as a loony.
- usaspending.gov
- IMF
- Statista: Combined value of billionaire wealth in the United States from March 2020 to November 2022
- Fortune Global 500
- xkcd What if?: ISS Music Video
- Minnesota Department of Transportation: Mn/DOT celebrates Interstate Highway System’s 50th anniversary
P.S. marking this NSFW because these numbers are just that obscene.
A million seconds is about 11 days. A billion seconds is about 32 years. A trillion seconds is about 31,000 years. 7 trillion seconds is about 222,000 years.
