[karmasimida]

In a full scale war with China, I don't think TSMC's fab can be preserved. China can destroy it without landing on the island, easily.

Taiwan is too close to China, that is a reality. Plus, modern chipmaking is an incredible sophisticated business, for example, you need huge amount of electricity and raw materials imported overseas to sustain the fab. When the war breaks, all of that would end.

Their effort should be spent on to prevent the war from happening in the first place, that is the only way to 'win' the war.

[tylermauthe]

China relies on the fabs in Taiwan just as much as everyone else though.

I agree that war should be avoided and "the only way to win is not to play"!

However, I think we should also be considering globally how we can act more like Holons [1] for greater resilience from all types of threats to global interdependence. We want loosely coupled systems, we should want loosely coupled government too!

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holon_(philosophy)

[r00fus]

Why would China destroy it when they can simply occupy Taiwan without much recourse?

I would bet in all their war-games, very few strats have the "TSMC destroyed" scenario checked.

[rdsnsca]

Very likely TSMC would destroy it themselves...scorched earth works.

[viro]

> without much recourse?

I think you underestimate how violently the US will respond to something like that. It honestly would the greatest existential threat to the US since WW2. Chips are a decent amount more important(at the moment) than oil and look at the crazy shit the US did for that.

[perl4ever]

When people say or imply that the US engages in "war for oil", it's virtually always (in my observation) left ambiguous whether the claim is that the US pursues genuine national interest, or that the foreign policy is subverted by some unspecified special interest not aligned with the US as a whole, such as private oil companies.

What are you really saying when you say the US did "crazy shit" [for oil]?