Please read the rest of the article. It discusses how China could force TSMC to stop producing chips. It even covers the US foundry, and why it won't make a difference.
> Please read the rest of the article. It discusses how China could force TSMC to stop producing chips. It even covers the US foundry, and why it won't make a difference.
But all of realistic options listed entail the fatal political defeat of Taiwan, mostly through military action. Existential political threats usually end up as military conflicts, one way or another.
The only option that doesn't involve military action is the disinformation campaign, but that's pretty far fetched.
My point is: the Chinese government has been trying to tell people that they don't need to work in the city. They could work in a rural farm and lead a simple life, albeit earning close to nothing.
The Foxconn employees are not doing anything really productive for China.
They’re in low value jobs that keeps themselves busy, but doesn’t bring in much profit for China, except for Foxconn and Apple.
Apple benefits from cheap Chinese labor, while selling their iWares at inflated prices.
What China can do instead, is to retarget these factory workers to work in software development, or AI grunt work.
Currently, AI requires a lot of manual human data labeling, in order to identify objects.
China can utilize this already cheap and organized factory labor, to build up an object inference database. That way, the AI systems of today, can cross reference against this inference database, to identify the object.
This inference database literally becomes, the new oil of the AI age.
And through a lot of sweat equity, China can possibly dominate this key area for the AI future.
Maybe this is why 5G is so important? The lower latency of 5G would usher in the AI age.
The western world is so focused on Foxconn, and its “supposed benefits” to China. But the benefits are meager. The biggest beneficiary is Apple itself.
China should let Foxconn and other low value industries go, in order to free themselves to work on higher value pursuits.
It doesn’t matter if you think they’re doing something productive for China Apple or anyone else, and the idea that they could suddenly repurpose them to do “AI” is incredibly far fetched. My point is hundreds of thousands if not millions of workers would be suddenly unemployed in such a trade war which would be an economic catastrophe, there’d be unavoidable civil unrest.
Those are not really 'options' because they have existential consequences.
'Missiles'? Really? Anyone can theoretically use 'missiles' to knock out the production capacity of some competitor's fabs.
It would be fatal to China's ambitions in everything because the world's reaction would be quite strong.
China has a lot of people upset around the world, but a lot of voices are muted because of perceived repercussions, but something 'over the top' would encourage all of those voices to come out at once.
Even Russia would have to 'think again' about their relationship.
You make a point but what I think the author is alluding to the fact that the US and allies have countered Chinese military actions (building bases in international territory) with words. If that track record holds, we may also use words to counter a missile strike on a TSMC fab.
If China attacks Taiwan it would lead to a war. If the USA backs down they are done as a power, the dollar would crash and the US debt would become unsubstantiated. Given that the war would escalate and China has an advantage of being close, the effort the USA would have to put in would cause a great deal of casualties, which would piss off then public in a Japan Pearl Harbor way so we could never back down. The logical course of action given the difference in ICBMs would be for the the USA just to nuke China after they fire the first missile. That’s the real world math. It’s highly likely the USA could destroy China without a great deal of damage. The Russians would sit it out hoping to become stronger after. Not making a moral judgement, just a military & economic one.
Feel free to disagree. I expect a storm of downvotes. Oh well.
Do you honestly think the USA would be willing to suffer even one city nuked for any reason at all, let alone to protect some small island in Asia most americans couldn't even find on a map? In my estimation there is absolutely no way they would; the question is laughable. China has over 50 ICBMs. The USA is not going to get into a nuclear exchange for Taiwan.
And it's pretty questionable whether the USA could even do much to stop a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. They could perhaps harass it a little, at great distance to avoid the otherwise inevitable loss of their carriers, but the success or failure of any invasion would largely depend on Taiwan's military and political/national will.
Is is possible the USA could wipe out the 50 ICBMs before they are launched. It would take around 15-20 minutes for an ICBM from the USA to reach China. A sub off the coast would take that down to less than 5 minutes. If the President gave the order to launch from the subs as soon as the first Chinese missiles hit Taiwan it would be seen as an acceptable risk. The real politic of this has nothing to do with Taiwan per se, but everything to do with the fact that everything is priced in dollars. Allowing China to invade Taiwan without doing anything places the dollar as the world currency in jeopardy. The ability of the USA to borrow money to fund its government and economy is key. Loosing that would pull everything down. So yes, I do believe the US would trade a city or 2 in order to ensure its place at the top of the world order.
The factories are in China, but they're making parts for American or multinational companies. And the CMs themselves may or may not be Chinese. Foxconn is Taiwanese, Flextronics is legally Singaporean but headquartered in the US. Those two alone might be close to a million jobs in China. How can Chinese manufacturing and the Chinese economy function without customers?
How long can China last without orders? Or oil? Or minerals from Australia?
If the Chinese political situation broke down to the point that they were bombing fabs in Taiwan, there will be plenty of ways to destabilize their efforts.
> 'Missiles'? Really? Anyone can theoretically use 'missiles' to knock out the production capacity of some competitor's fabs.
Yeah but PRC would totally do it. They already gave the go-ahead to their allies to attack U.S. partners with missiles, a first-party strike is really not hard to imagine.
But all of realistic options listed entail the fatal political defeat of Taiwan, mostly through military action. Existential political threats usually end up as military conflicts, one way or another.
The only option that doesn't involve military action is the disinformation campaign, but that's pretty far fetched.