[starspangled]

TSMC factories on Taiwan are small fry in the scheme of things and won't really move the needle much, in terms of strategy. Samsung and Intel are pretty comparable in manufacturing capability, within a couple of years really. And most chips you find in cars and ships and missiles and satellites and jets aren't leading-edge either.

China is terrified of their access to the sea being blockaded. They'd gladly give up TSMC technology without a second thought and continue to bribe, beg, steal their way around sancations and barriers to semiconductor technology as they have been doing just fine up to now if they could occupy Taiwan for its strategic position to deny American access and defend the sea around their coast.

[shellfishgene]

How would you bock China's access to the sea along it's 14000 km coastline? That woulde be a heck of a blockade, with or without Taiwan.

[starspangled]

> How would you bock China's access to the sea along it's 14000 km coastline?

With missiles and submarines presumably.

> That woulde be a heck of a blockade, with or without Taiwan.

Of course, due to China's military build up around the sea. Due to their being afraid of said blockade. The one they want Taiwan and other disputed islands to help counter.

[AcerbicZero]

Why block the whole thing when all shipping traffic goes through 3 chokepoints and the chinese navy is brown water at best?

[cookiemonsieur]

Exactly. We have a westerner bragging about blocking a 5000 years old country's access to the sea like it's a normal thing and they're not the intruder. Hilarious.

[starspangled]

What are you talking about? You think I'm a westerner bragging about blocking something that isn't even blocked and I'm an intruder?

All I said was that China is terrified of naval blockade, which it is. You're the one being hilarious here.

[JumpCrisscross]

> TSMC factories on Taiwan are small fry in the scheme of things and won't really move the needle much

We’re in an era of personal politics. Taipei should be angling for prioritising indigenous, cutting-edge chip production to Musk’s xAI.

[heylook]

> Samsung and Intel are pretty comparable in manufacturing capability, within a couple of years really.

Thank you for making it so easy to completely ignore the rest of your comment.

[starspangled]

Easy to assume you could only respond with that because you are incapable of providing a coherent response to the quoted point or any of the others.

[yo_yo_yo-yo]

You significantly underestimate the importance of compute superiority for data synthesis for command & control.

[starspangled]

No I don't, and anyway US-aligned semiconductor design and fabrication is still superior to Chinese if TSMC did not exist.

[yo_yo_yo-yo]

TSMC is the only card Taiwan has, hence your argument doesn’t hold water.

But, I think I see where you’re going: the US preemptively destroying Taiwan’s fab capacity…

[JumpCrisscross]

> TSMC is the only card Taiwan has

In the way Ukraine’s only card is its mineral wealth, sure.

Taiwan is the Belgium of the American security system. If our guarantees are useless there, they’re useless everywhere and new global security guarantors are needed. If Taiwan falls, moreover, China has unconstrained access to the Pacific. That brings the next conflict closer to American shores. It also threatens American naval power globally given our reliance on Korean and Japanese shipyards.

[yo_yo_yo-yo]

This branch of the discussion stems from my assertion that high-end compute is the enriched uranium of our time. I’m sorry I can’t defend this better. I feel US tech is busy making chatbots and deepfake video generators, and at best fancy overpriced drones like Anduril. This is not the future of warfare.

I have nothing to say about Ukraine. My original root comment is simply that weakening TSMC’s capacity by spreading it to the US is not in the interest of Taiwanese security. But as I responded elsewhere, this is probably just optics.

[nthingtohide]

Why aren't people questioning the Ukraine mineral narrative? Is the news story really solid? We heard similar stories about Afghanistan. Here are some counterpoints. This video points out articles by Bloomberg stating Ukraine has no such relevant mineral reserves.

Ukraine's $500 billion rare earths scam: they don't exist, and we should know better

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tILXLxMTmgA

[starspangled]

> TSMC is the only card Taiwan has,

No it isn't.

> But, I think I see where you’re going: the US preemptively destroying Taiwan’s fab capacity…

I'm not going anywhere. China would bomb TSMCs factories itself and spend hundreds of times more on an invasion and subsequent sanctions and costs than it spends on funding its own semiconductor development, if it meant it could control Taiwan. Taiwan's cards are that it is a linchpin for air and naval control of the South and East China seas, and that it is protected from invasion by a hundred miles of water and challenging geography. That's why China wants it. That's the card.

Blow up all TSMC's factories on Taiwan tomorrow and relocate its scientists and engineers and you think China would suddenly drop its ambitions to "reunify" and take control of the island? Since its alleged only card was gone?

[GlobalFrog]

My take is that it doesn’t even matter if Taipei has any card: this is not an economical/technological issue, it is an ideological one. China won’t blink an eye to invade if the conditions are right, because they want to unite their country, it is part of their identity. That might happen if anywhere else, there is a land grab. That won’t be Ukraine, because the US are not involved there, but if the US try to follow up on their claims about Greenland or Panama, Taipei is doomed within a month. As Trump is an adept of quid pro quo, that would mean a good deal for him, so the goal is to extract as much value from Taipei before letting them dead in the water.