[sgeisler]

Am I the only one who is worried every time such a news drops? Achieving high-tech autarky is a first step towards a war with china becoming viable. Not that the alternative would be much better: a war being nonviable and the west bending to their wishes. But still, I think it shows there are real concerns on the highest levels and it is considered an actual possibility. Scary.

[onepointsixC]

I'm confused as to your assertion that war somehow wouldn't be viable. WW1 was previously thought to be impossible because of the economic interdependence and trade and yet all the same it had happened.

We're talking about a a revisionist, expansionist state that is rising, believes the existing power to be fragile, weak, and on the decline. It isn't a question of "Viability". The CCP sees serious geopolitical benefits to an armed conflict.

[rualca]

> Achieving high-tech autarky is a first step towards a war with china becoming viable.

That's a false dillema. The choice is not between self-sufficiency and war with China, and dependency and ever-lasting peace with China.

The choice is actually between war with China when China controls all the industry, and war with China when it fails to control and restrict access to that resource.

Given the choice, achieving self-sufficiency is more likely to ensure peace/dissuade war than dependency.

[tovej]

I see, it looks to me like you've replaced one false dilemma with another false dilemma.

Why would a war with China be inevitable?

[randomopining]

CCP is going to start the war. That's the problem with autocratic ethnostates.

[typon]

Given the history of the number of wars started by the United States vs. started by China in the past 80 years, this comment seems highly ahistorical.

[scottLobster]

Chinese incursions into Taiwanese airspace have increased in the past few months. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/26/taiwan-reports...

It's speculation, but China appears to be building up normalcy bias in Taiwanese defenses, get them used to seeing Chinese aircraft and making them more complacent.

Add the fact that China's national victim mentality is driving it to restore itself to it's perceived state before the "west" messed it up (includes regaining Taiwan), and that objective being one of the socio-political foundations of the CCP's power, and the CCP being well aware that China will start running out of young people in next decade due to one child policy (makes military adventures harder for both manpower and economic reasons), and Xi consolidating more power under himself and his cult of personality than any Chinese ruler since Mao...

Yeah if I was Taiwan I'd be subtly building some extra "tourism infrastructure" on the beaches and quietly stepping up training requirements for reserves; and give the US whatever it wants in exchange for a couple of carrier battle groups if needed.

[randomopining]

CCP is highly pragmatic, they're just using everything as a nationalistic smoke screen to get what they want - control of Asia and probably the world.

It's funny because anybody with a brain could look at China in 1970 and look at it now, while asking themselves: "Hmmm, how did China do with that opening up to the US/West?"

It's laughable, but anti-US will say "buh buh buh... IRAQ!" as some sort of blanket example that the US has to stand aside now and let anybody do anything they want.

[typon]

> US has to stand aside now and let anybody do anything they want.

Reducing three countries to rubble (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya) in just the past 20 years means exactly that the US has no place in international politics and should be treated as an extremely dangerous country, sanctioned by the United Nations for warcrimes, made to pay trillions in damages and slowly be re-introduced into the global village once they are demilitarized.

[randomopining]

Laughable.

Iraq - I didn't agree with it. But look at the country now versus 20 years ago... it's a democracy in much better shape.

Afghanistan - we needed to take out al-Qaeda after the attacks. The country is broken, and outside actors help the Taliban continue their terrorism. You support the Taliban? Popular opinion supports the democratic government.

Libya - Russia and Turkey are the big players there now, continuing the civil war. I guess it's not as simple as you make it out to be, huh?

And yet you gloss over the countries like Japan, South Korea, Phillipines, Colombia, Eastern Europe and Western, that have all entered our sphere after war and have done amazingly economically while retaining high quality democracies.

Without the US, the world would quickly devolve back to fighting warlord/autocratic ethnostates. Or an autocratic CCP-controlled world.

[spaetzleesser]

The US has a long history of taking on small countries. They usually don’t start something against a strong opponent.

[randomopining]

Ah yes, so the conclusion is that the US will start all wars and poor China will start 0 wars and do 0 aggressive things. So glad we have such a critical geopolitical mind here to show us the way.

Or... it's much more complicated and China has been slowly angling to usurp control (unjustly) for decades.

[AniseAbyss]

ASML builds the machines that Intel, TSMC and every other fab relies on. You never hear much about them. They are based in the Netherlands- a country that prefers to operate below the radar.

[phlipski]

And below sea level! I'll be here all week folks!

[antupis]

So called https://mediawiki.middlebury.edu/IPE/Golden_Arches_Theory_of...

[IG_Semmelweiss]

I believe this was disproven with the war of 1995.

https://www.quora.com/What-you-think-about-Golden-Arches-the...

[sgeisler]

Thx for the pointer, nice to know the name of the theory. Although it only covers a part of my argument. My concern was also in regards to how much military tech could be built on short notice inside the US if it came to a prolonged war and most of the existing toys were destroyed after some months. That was what I meant with a war being nonviable (would end in a nuclear MAD scenario imo without the capacity to rebuild conventional weapons).

[CivBase]

The US's current dependency on China is one-way. China is not co-dependent on the US. The existing dependency structure does not incentivize China to avoid war.

Besides, most of the US wars in the last half century have been started because the US was dependent on another nation. It seems a self-sufficient US may actually be less likely to go to war.

[duxup]

People aren't logical, there's no magical economic connection, or even military deterrent that you can rely on to prevent a war.

[mschuster91]

> Achieving high-tech autarky is a first step towards a war with china becoming viable.

Definitely, but it's also a sensible precaution against natural disaster (earthquakes, tsunamis), madman-going-mad (especially Kim Jong Un, whose missiles have more than enough capability to reach Taiwan) and other (like the Suez Canal fuck-up) risk.

It simply is too much risk when too many companies depend on one single other company's (TSMC) products... Apple, AMD/ATI, almost all automobile supply chains...

[oaiey]

And not forget, there are other dependencies (cheap stuff vs exports to the US) beyond just semiconductors.

[cies]

I like this guy's take on things:

https://youtu.be/mX4owHcVjFo

[dbuder]

A self declared communist defending the CCP on moral grounds? What do you like?

[cies]

> A self declared communist

Source? Because he's not by his actions even close to a communist.

And having been in China lately, I can ensure you CCP is only communist in name.