The next casualty of Trump’s war is already here

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The world has lost 40 per cent of its helium supply since the start of the Iran war, first from Qatar and then from Russia.

We will find out soon enough whether the global digital economy can shrug off losses on this scale and whether political leaders will allow the AI boom to keep gobbling up an ever greater share of the scarce helium that remains.

Industry cannot make advanced AI chips or semiconductors below 10 nanometres without ultra-high-purity helium to cool the wafers and stabilise the plasma for etching. Even workhorse chips for cars and computers require lower-grade helium at 99.999 per cent purity.

But we also need helium for other high priorities: in nuclear power, advanced weaponry, aerospace, fibre-optic cables, quantum computing, chromatography or to cool superconducting magnets in MRI machines.

“Everybody is scrambling around trying to scoop up whatever they can find in the world,” said Phil Kornbluth, the founder of Kornbluth Helium and former head of gases at BOC.

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Stephen BartholomeuszSenior business columnist

Senior business columnist

There are no easy substitutes. Liquid helium is the coldest known substance on Earth, with a boiling point of minus 269 degrees.

It cannot be synthesised artificially – it is created naturally over millions of years through the radioactive decay of thorium and uranium – and is extracted from natural gas deposits using cryogenic distillation.

Helium is hard to store. China has strategic stockpiles of everything but not for this one vital input.

It is a small cost for digital behemoths with the deepest pockets in the world, relying on “fabs” or foundries that cost $US20 billion ($28 billion) a shot. “They are not going to close a wafer fab,........

© WA Today