[willvarfar]

Yes China wants Taiwan.

Taiwan has been touting it's "Silicon Shield" defence for years and trying to tie China's self-interest with leaving Taiwan alone for now.

But the Silicon Shield is tumbling.

On the one side the US (the carrots of the CHIPS act under Biden, the stick of sanctions on Taiwan under Trump) is trying get sovereign control of chip production.

And on the other side China is ramping up getting sovereign control of it's own top-end production.

If both stay on course then China will have one less big reason not to invade, and the US will have one big reason less to defend.

Of course if China wins the 'race' then it could be to it's advantage to have a rocket exchange or invasion with Taiwan to choke of the West's supply of chips before the West has brought chip production home?

[noxs]

I don't really think it will choke the supply, but only reduce in capacity in short term, for example TSMC Arizona[1] took 4 years to be in produciton. Intel's process is still acceptable and better than China.

Also semiconductor is very complicated manufacturing process not only invovles Taiwan but vendors all over the world, like the light source of EUV is provided by Cymer based in U.S. I don't think China taking over Taiwan would mean they can transfer whatever is there into something productive in any short time as because of supply chain problem. Note that many SMIC's (basically China's TSMC) leadership are actually from TSMC already[2].

[1]https://www.tsmc.com/static/abouttsmcaz/index.htm [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liang_Mong_Song