[MVissers]

Decoupling from China will lead to China annex Taiwan sooner. China will have the USA and the world by the balls then, so not sure we want that to happen quicker.

And I don't think anyone is calling themselves allies of the USA right now. The whole world is looking to decouple from the USA. Europe is completely over the USA, they can't rely on them for leadership, protection or for trade.

From a tech perspective, expect Europe to decouple from the USA from an economic and cultural perspective in the next decade. Smartest thing Europe can do is to create alternatives to US services, build its own defense industry and stop looking at the USA for any leadership.

[permo-w]

is TSMC not currently building a plant in the US? and ASML are Dutch, so they're not at risk. I’m not saying that China taking Taiwan wouldn't be a massive strategic boon, but I don't think it would be "having the world by the balls" by any means

[anigbrowl]

I suggest reading this before getting too excited about shiny new manufacturing plants that will require years to stand up.

https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/business/2023/03/23/wha...

[DougMerritt]

TSMC has not committed to a US plant that applies their most advanced technology. Currently, they are going to produce chips with larger slower features, some generations behind their state of the art -- that's commercially very useful, and a good idea, but in no way replaces the state of the art chips that they produce in Taiwan. Alas.

[nsteel]

I think the last 6 years have shown how shakey electronics supply chains are. One factory in the US isn't going to come close to avoiding chaos.

[robocat]

A knowledge economy depends on information. TSMC will keep key knowledge within Taiwan as part of their Silicon Shield[1].

Look closely at a business you know well and notice how much the profits depend upon information in people's heads.

Everything runs on a combination of money (capitalist profits) and non-money gains (other gains that people really care about).

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tsmc+silicon+shield

[permo-w]

do you not think that if China invaded Taiwan, the top minds there would just leave and go elsewhere? the machines they use are built in the Netherlands. I know it's not quite as simple as that, but I don't think it'd be the end of the world like people are saying. I think worse would be the precedent it would set.

[robocat]

Other companies have the same EUV machines. TSMC also made the good decision in hindsight to make an early bet on those machines.

We know TSMC is dominant - the real knowledge of how they are doing that is in the heads of people working at TSMC. Or maybe better to say that something is missing from the competitors? Process? Management? Everything?

Cadence and Synopsys are US companies that need to know many of the technical parameters of TSMC processes. They might know more.

Intel's Tick–tock model has lost it's tick. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Tick%E2%80%93tock_model

[permo-w]

well then the question remains to be: where do the loyalties of TSMC lie, and where do the loyalties of its employees lie?

[absolutelastone]

I think it's three at this point? With the first one coming online this year.

[pfannkuchen]

America only cared about Taiwan because it warehoused the exiled American friendly government that had a historical claim to power and could potentially be reinstalled.

As time goes on that becomes less and less relevant. Might be time to cut and run.

[roenxi]

> Decoupling from China will lead to China annex Taiwan sooner. China will have the USA and the world by the balls then, so not sure we want that to happen quicker.

That seems to be over-rating the importance of Taiwan. If Taiwan sank into the sea tomorrow that'd be a catastrophe and the world would be worse off. But not that badly worse off. Life would continue. China's main global lever comes from the power of their unparalleled-in-history industrial strength and the aura of leadership they are building up internationally because they are substantially more peaceful than the US.

The peacefulness is probably not going to last, unfortunately, but until they change tack it is what it is.

[0dayz]

Ah so now we shouldn't give a shit about country let alone a democratic country being invaded.

Why not turn America then into a nuclear testing site? Since democracies aren't important.

[ta20240528]

"Ah so now we shouldn't give a shit about country let alone a democratic country being invaded."

After the US's abandonment of Ukraine, I'd say you are well past worrying about that.

[defrost]

No need, the United States of America already has more surface and underground nuclear test locations than any other nation on earth (IIRC), even more if atmospheric tests are included as those drifted fallout onto US ground surface.

  There have been 2,121 tests done since the first in July 1945, involving 2,476 nuclear devices

~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons_tests

Of these, one thousand and thirty two have been US tests (not all within the mainland contiguous USofA).

Air imagery of Yucca Flat looks like a bad case of acne, it's riddled with pockmark craters from underground nuclear tests.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Flat

  has been called "the most irradiated, nuclear-blasted spot on the face of the earth".

  In March 2009, TIME identified the 1970 Yucca Flat Baneberry Test, where 86 workers were exposed to radiation, as one of the world's worst nuclear disasters.