The USA is not going to collapse into the Stone Age any time soon and anyone who was saying such things was delusional. The USA will be one of the poles of the multipolar world.

I agree. Yet time and again I see these predictions that the US is doomed, that by 2030s they're going to be in revolutionary conditions or collapsed from the weight of their failures.

You are acting like this news in the article is a huge surprise when it is in fact not surprising that eventually the facility would match capabilities of other similar facilities. It is not a particularly yuge achievement to merely replicate what they could already do. The fact that it was delayed so long is embarrassing however.

I mean it should come as a huge surprise to those here who have been mocking the US effort and saying things like they'd never get these up anytime soon, how the capitalists would pocket all the money, how TSMC would deliberately sabotage things to maintain their control in Taiwan, and on and on. If you took as gospel some of the things I've seen highly upvoted here you'd be shocked to see this and indeed I was a little saddened, not shocked, but saddened because I suppose I thought they might be dysfunctional enough that this could drag on through the middle of this decade into the latter half and really slow them down and buy China time.

This is part of a larger trend of the USA stripping valuables from its vassals as discussed in earlier threads. The vassals in Europe have already been severely damaged and the libs who were planning to move to Europe are probably reconsidering those plans.

Agreed. Not only stripping things like industry but in the process hollowing out living conditions in vassals to allow them in the near future to attract their best talent and bring them to the US (perhaps at discount rates compared to American workers in some cases due to desperation). They are drawing the strength they lent their vassals back to them for the final stand, fortifying their position.