>“Complete nonsense,” retorts Pierre Ferragu of New Street Research, a financial firm. tsmc has almost simultaneously launched a new fab in Taiwan, with four times the wafer capacity—and more advanced technology—than the two proposed Arizona foundries. Its bet on America is more of a long-term insurance policy than an immediate game-changer. It enables tsmc to start the tough job of recruiting a workforce and amassing suppliers in America, providing a baseline for expansion “if the Chinese are crazy enough to bomb Taiwan”. For the foreseeable future, though, most r&d is likely to remain in Taiwan. So will at least four-fifths of tmsc’s capacity.
It is unfortunate the truth and decent analysts dont get enough press coverage because they dont fit the narrative of current trend.
- The only way to understand the Press is to remember that they pander to their readers' prejudices.
It is in China's interests that Taiwan not be the centre of global chip manufacturing. And the US's interest. Europe's too. The situation is delicate, but I suspect in time Taiwan will become less strategically important. Too many powerful players would benefit from that industry going somewhere else. An economic competitive advantage is not enough to make the US take strategic risks, or to hold China off.
It makes sense that there would be literal conspiracies a work in this situation. If I were in Taiwan, I would assume that the US plant represents some sort of threat to the geopolitical status quo. Regardless of what some analyst thinks.
I suspect the PRC won't outright bomb much of Taiwan but instead go straight for the presidential palace in Taipei and try to force an ROC capitulation early.
I think they're counting on the ruling class / landowners / capitalists to pressure the government to capitulate at fear of property destruction, which I also expect to be in line with reality. Doing capitalism in a country like taiwan is better than in the PRC, but doing it in the PRC is better than not being able to do it at all because all your assets were obliterated.
What I think none of these people are counting on is that there are rabidly anti CPC people here in Taiwan, leftist or otherwise, and some of these people engage in post-military service training and drilling. I suspect that if the above comes to pass and the CPC is successful in forcing an ROC surrender, the factories are burning one way or the other, due to "self-sabotage" by workers or guerillas.
Then the PLA gets to have fun for a decade chasing guerillas around the choking thick jungle and mountains that make up the majority of the landmass in Taiwan. Many of these will be indigenous who have lived in the mountains for generations and per capita by demographic make up more of the (non conscripted) military than any other demographic.
I don't think any of this will come to pass though because I, like most people in Taiwan (including the usa consulate staff), believe the possibility of invasion is slim.
The old ‘capture the leadership and the country will surrender in a few days’ strategy. Works every time. The thing is I’m sure the PRC Intelligence service have done analyses of what would happen if Russia invaded Ukraine, and what would happen if China invaded Taiwan. I wonder what the first one said? If the credibility of the Taiwan scenario is tied in Xi’s mind to the credibility of the first, that would give us a rough idea of the likelihood he might go for it.
The other problem is that China is way more dependent on outside trade than Russia. They rely on food and energy imports too much, while Russia is self sufficient in both. The same sanctions as on Russia would bring China to its knees in months. In case anyone say “but everyone was saying the sanctions on Russia would cripple them too”, no, not everyone was saying that. The same magazine, The Economist, was explaining why that wasn’t going to happen right from the start.
> instead go straight for the presidential palace in Taipei
Will that work if the politicians work from home?
On the recent Brazilian uprising, when the election losers stormed the capital they found out that it is a holiday and there’s no some special object in the government buildings which makes you the new leader once you physically obtain it.
China is Taiwan's largest trading partner. 42% of Taiwan exports go to China and Hong Kong. 22% of Taiwan imports are from China. Around 200,000 to 400,000 Taiwanese work in China. China doesn't need to militarily invade Taiwan. Like Hong Kong, it can just wait until the economic reality is that Taiwan is already a vassal state dependent on China. At that point, it can move military troops into Taiwan if needed. There won't be a fight, because at that point, the USA will already be far more darkly insular.
On the other hand if China bombs the fabs, 1) it cripples the west's economy (and potentially its military supply chain also), 2) it ceases to make Taiwan a strategic asset to the West since there are no more fab to defend. To me it's a no brainer, particularly if they think Taiwan won't let them capture the fabs anyway (will destroy them before China controls the territory).
I, born on the another side of the strait, also believe the possiblity of attacking is very slim. PRC's economy is still pretty dependant on exports to western countries. If a war with ROC start, CPC will have to pay a great cost to compensate the loss in exports.
However, for some reason I don't understand, a significant portion of people from PRC are expecting a war to happen, and ridiculously believing such a war can be good to them. Maybe CPC is playing the old game again, posturing the "pro-democracy" entities as hostile in the propaganda to gain support politically.
> I suspect the PRC won't outright bomb much of Taiwan but instead go straight for the presidential palace in Taipei and try to force an ROC capitulation early.
> I suspect the PRC won't outright bomb much of Taiwan but instead go straight for the presidential palace in Taipei and try to force an ROC capitulation early.
Taiwan is not Somalia. It's a fairly advanced country with a fairly good military (comparing to its size).
> I think they're counting on the ruling class / landowners / capitalists to pressure the government to capitulate at fear of property destruction, which I also expect to be in line with reality. Doing capitalism in a country like taiwan is better than in the PRC, but doing it in the PRC is better than not being able to do it at all because all your assets were obliterated.
China will do worse than Russia. People in Ukraine had reasons to join Russia, ie: their country is very corrupt and poor. I highly doubt the rich and educated Taiwanese will want to join the CPC.
> I don't think any of this will come to pass though because I, like most people in Taiwan (including the usa consulate staff), believe the possibility of invasion is slim.
The possibility is very slim at the moment. Of course, timing matter. In the future, it could go both ways. That will depend on the status of the US, China and Taiwan itself.
The only reasons could make PRC take over Taiwan is: 1) Taiwan declare official independence; 2) US blocks China from semiconductors so bad, it has to take over Taiwan to gain access to technologies.
CPC knows taking over Taiwan is costly to them, and it is not a good deal. It is not like we are so much better at analyzing the situation better than professionals.
> I, like most people in Taiwan (including the usa consulate staff), believe the possibility of invasion is slim.
There’s a paradox here. The more everyone believes this, the worse the preparations are and the more likely invasion becomes.
For instance, the RoC Army doesn’t have enough soldiers or the right equipment and pretty much everyone is ok with this because hey, possibility of invasion is slim. They prioritise buying vanity hardware like fighter planes instead of weapons that fit a porcupine strategy like Javelin missiles. (Porcupines don’t attack but defend really well).
You correctly point out that guerrillas can fight the PLA thanks to terrain. But that would be more realistic if they had a large supply of Javelins.
I mean, they’re expanding to Japan too. I can totally see how having at least one fab in your country would make you much less worried about choosing TSMC as your supplier, even if most of their actual capacity isn’t there.
The only reason why TSMC is expanding outside Taiwan is because protectionism is back.
Americans don't want to admit it though.
Hilariously it will make Taiwan more vulnerable because it makes defending the island less necessary.
During the cold war the enduring question was: is America willing to commit mass suicide to protect Western Europe if the USSR invades? Thankfully we never got a definitive answer on that.
I suspect their investments in the US are also simply because the US asked them to and they (including the Taiwanese government) are not in a position to refuse.
China’s problem is that they import something like 80% of their chips (predominantly from Taiwan). The thing is that semi-conductor fabs don’t exactly respond well to war time conditions. So unless China can invade without without any meaningful resistance, it’s likely that it could be a long time before before that capacity is back online, which would cost china (as a large importer) dearly
China does not have that long if they invade. The US does not need to counter Chinese military locally, just hold Japan and cut off Persian Gulf and all food imports. China imports almost all good and energy.
China can only invade Taiwan to start ww3, and only if it is ready to use nukes pretty soon.
That’s one thing most people don’t understand about China… they import most of their food and energy. They’re stuck playing the nice(ish) neighbor because of where their nation spawned on earth.
The article alludes to but doesn't mention the "silicon shield".
This move by TSMC doesn't weaken the shield, but it weakens the spear. The most likely defender of Taiwan against an aggressor would be the U.S. military. Having a native chipmaking capability somewhat reduces the U.S.'s interest in intervening.
What it doesn't do is incentivize aggression against Taiwan. The likely aggressors would lose access to chips to fuel their economies as long as TSMC doesn't aid or allow those countries to build local fabs.
> The likely aggressors would lose access to chips to fuel their economies
Economic arguments for war being irrational and therefore unlikely have a history of falling flat on their face. Most infamously, this claim was made about major wars in Europe right before the First World War: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion
Unless you're very careful and hedge your words, claiming that X ("war will cause economic harm to both parties") will cause a reduction in Y ("likelihood of war") leads everyone to say your claim is "disproven" whenever Y happens. Doesn't automatically mean the claim has actually been disproven.
It’s a different scenario imo. The economic ties between the US and China are much stronger than the European powers prewar, which were all colonial powers with protectionism and merchantilist trade policy.
News coverage of China is asinine, vacillating between the WSJ/Gordon Chang “the communists are about to collapse” nonsense and the “General <x> says the Chinese are aggressively aggressive and catching up” patter. The chip bullshit is all about Intel lobbying for billions to pull its nuts out of the fire.
IMO Chinese policy is methodical and not unlike what the RAND people cooked up in the 1960s. They make investments in Africa and Latin America that benefit China, build up a military power as deterrence, and have a trade relationship with the US and Europe that transformed the nation from a decrepit backwater into a global power in 50 years.
Why would they want a pyrrhic victory (or defeat that would damage the Beijing government) in Taiwan? Taiwan isn’t Hong Kong. Aggressive rhetoric and policy accomplishes political objectives, and the long game is to foment instability in Taiwan and wait it out.
The risk of conflict with China is North Korea and Japan, not Taiwan.
If there are US fabs, and China invades Taiwan then Taiwanese fabs are destroyed, and China loses access to advanced chips, but the US and the west do not. This puts China at a major disadvantage compared to the US, for at least a few decades in the future, if it decides to invade Taiwan.
It seems unlikely that US and west would get involved in a direct major military conflict with China, no matter what. The costs are too great. It is far more likely that they would only provide military equipment and intelligence (like Ukraine).
So this move of TSMC actually strengthens the shield a lot more than it weakens the spear.
That's because it's not a widely accepted term by any measure. I am all for Taiwan and its liberties, however, I cringe whenever I see journalists have made up a new term like "silicon shield" and expect people to adopt it.
When it comes to international security, I don't think those in charge think about TSMC more than just in passage. Just look at Ukraine. The US is helping Ukraine a lot, but there's pretty much nothing that Ukraine is/was producing that the US needs.
In practice, if war happens and TSMC facilities are bombed to avoid passing into Chinese control, how many years does the world go back in processor state of art? Are we back to 486 level, Athlon 64 level, core family first generation, or what? What is the new average feature size, in nm, we are likely to fall back to if things go south in Taiwan?
I mostly agree with your points but want to point out there's always potential for things to change. The PRC is still investing heavily into developing native chipmaking capability in all stages of the production chain despite a string of high profile failures in the last 5 years. For military purposes the chips don't have to be made with state of the art technology. They just need to be good enough to work and achieve their intended purpose, sometimes rather crudely. Should a breakthrough happen, Taiwan's "silicon shield" could weaken quite a bit.
I still lean towards a "no hot war" scenario because the PRC's demographic structure is deteriorating just like Russia's, and Putin has already demonstrated a lesson with the war in Ukraine.
In exactly what way is this conflict actually heating up lately? I've certainly noticed the increase in news coverage, but don't know of, e.g. military actions by CN/US that indicate conflict coming closer.
President Xi has more reasons to invade Taiwan now than usual. He is getting older, and Taiwan reunification has been on his wish-list for a long time, recently reaffirmed and suggesting force is on the table[1]. The U.S. is currently managing a situation in Ukraine and economic problems, and China is currently in an acute COVID crisis which sparked mass protests, and a less acute economic crisis (reduced GDP growth).
A war would be a great distraction for the local population. The inevitable sanctions and disruption of chip production would excuse poor GDP growth. To top it off, a "glorious victory" (Pyrrhic victory) is pretty likely. The U.S. has global reach, but it's still not as logistically feasible for the U.S. to fight from staged forces in Japan and the Philippines as it is for China to fight from their home territory.
If an invasion is to happen it probably has to happen the next decade. Xi is getting older and China's population has now officially started to decline.
I can't see an invasion happening without massive loss of life on both sides and destroying Taiwan's value. Perhaps their plan is to conduct a massive long-term blockade. This would be more in-line China's typical actions of being aggressive in diplomacy and in stretching the boundaries of international law. If they outnumber the US in the Pacific what can the US do but watch? The US almost certainly would be unwilling to fire the first shot.
It's a big call though, to risk starting a war and pissing off the population if they're already not to happy about Covid19's handling.
In contrast, Hitler made Germans feel like they were heading for a better place so he garnered support, Xi though, doesn't seem as charismatic and popular. So it's going to be a much harder sell to start an all out hot war over something that means basically nothing to 99% of the population.
Also invading a country is one thing, hanging onto it is another, Syria, Afganistan, Vietnam etc for example. China isn't exactly going to make friends taking the country by force.
A war would be a great distraction for the local population until the quick victories stop happening. They would only do it when they have nothing to lose. And based on the amount of children of CCP officials in Ivy League schools (including Xi's own daughter) and Wall Street firms, they do have everything to lose for the foreseeable future.
I firmly believe in the odds of a hot war being extremely low until the children of high ranking CCP officials start a mass exodus from their comfy white collar lives in the Western world, much like Putin recalling his yachts on the eve of the war in Ukraine.
They didn’t enter Taiwan’s airspace. They entered its self-proclaimed air defense identification zone, which extends well beyond its own airspace and even into mainland China.
China’s recent actions have been increasingly provocative, but it’s erroneous to state that there were incursions into Taiwanese airspace.
China has mass produced so many warships, they now outnumber the US Navy.
I don't expect that China will make a move yet though, they also are building capital ships, like Aircraft Carriers, and also producing ship killing Hypersonic Missiles.
So the nature is that China is preparing for a fight. Hopefully it's just bluster.
> they also are building capital ships, like Aircraft Carriers, and also producing ship killing Hypersonic Missiles.
The Chinese need a full compliment of carriers to enforce a total blockade of the island and effective hypersonic anti-ship missiles to fend off US capital ships. The launch platform (H-6N) for the hypersonics is already in their arsenal. When the carriers and missiles are available it's all over for Taiwan. This is less than 4-5 years out as China is urgently working on both.
Meanwhile the US is developing LRASM, Rapid Dragon and others specifically for this scenario. The missing piece is a really long range anti-aircraft missile to threaten the H-6 fleet without exposing nuclear powered US capital ships to Chinese weapons. The F-14 would have been an ideal platform for this.
Ultimately though, unless the US is willing to go all-out kinetic with China over Taiwan there is no hope. It's a small island 100 miles off the coast of an enormous, powerful, wealthy enemy with an epic chip on its shoulder, and its key ally is on the wrong side of the Pacific.
Smart money can see this so advanced fabs are popping up all over the West.
They are largely posturing, even including the arms race and airspace incursions. The risk of ruin of a direct confrontation of th PRC and the USA in a hot war is infinite because the USA reserves the ability to launch pre-emptive nuclear strikes which the PRC would retaliate.
Taiwan buying US equipment yields $$$ for the US. TSMC building fabs in Arizona yields $$$ for TSMC and the US. China selling manufactured goods to Taiwan and the US yields $$$ for China. Media/influencers writing panic-bait to hype up engagement metrics yields $$$ for content creators and shareholders. $$$ is the only thing that matters for every entity involved in this situation.
Also Xi’s consolidation of power and his stated goals, which makes earlier aggression much more likely over some other leader or more distributed power.
Events in Ukraine made us realize that, when one side makes a bunch of threats, and then does a huge "drill" on the borders of the other side, sometimes that's the prelude to an invasion.
And after Pelosi's visit a few months back things have only heated up.
For a long time China was relatively diplomatic about Taiwan. They claimed it was part of China, but they also didn't go out of their way to say "we will take it by any means necessary".
Who knows where this will end ... maybe it'll all be very anti-climatic, or maybe not ... But it's certainly a bit hotter than it was before.
How would you compare that against the US wanting to take proper control over Hawaii by any means necessary? Puerto Rico? Cuba?
For a long time, the US has been content treating Hawaii as a tourist destination and military base, but should the federal government laws apply there?
Ah, yes. "When life gives you lemons, get a superpower on another continent to subsidize you to diversify your lemonaid production to within their borders."
You have a long history of posting flamebait to HN. I've been asking you to stop it for years, and it's getting old. Surely you know the site guidelines by now? If you keep breaking them, we are going to have to ban you.
That really wasn't intended to be flamebait. It was intended to be a funny twist on "when life gives you lemons" combined with what TSMC is doing, building a fab in the US.
And I honestly don't see how you're taking it as being flamebait. Could you point out why it comes across that way? (It's been flagged, so I assume that you weren't the only one who read it that way...)
You rate-limited me, and bumping against that from time to time has been a good reminder to not flame people. I have been trying to watch both my words and my attitude when posting. As I said, I wasn't trying for flamebait here - more for a bit of a joke. (Yeah, I know, I know, guidelines on that too...)
Can someone with some industry experience comment on how RISC-V will change the geopolitical dynamics? From what I understand it's a standardized instruction set (coming out of UCS Berkeley) that would provide a standard design for chips. From what I've read it doesn't sound like the architecture would be able to be able to be used on M1 and M2 chip design, but it does mean that fabrication of chips would be open sourced so long as it conforms to the standard.
To me this sounds like the US is adopting a bet on entrenched monopolies in Intel and TSMC while China is making a bid for open source architectures (I wouldn't say that there are "good guys" and "bad guys" here, only that in the Machiavellian sense the US has first mover advantage in chips and is engaged in import restrictions and RISC-V is a new standard).
I worry that this could have implications for Taiwan if they lose the geopolitical advantage of having a monopoly on chip production. I'm also concerned that the US administration could be placing big bets for the economy on shoring up tech firms that may become outdated when the chip making market becomes competitive again internationally.
The actual chips still have to be made and that's where the conflicts are happening, because China's domestic semiconductor production is still reliant on foreign suppliers such as ASML for crucial stages of production. This isn't a war about instruction sets or computer architecture. And no RISC-V doesn't provide a "standard design" for chips. It is about making different chips made by different parties to be able to run the same programs without the licensing nightmare of Intel-AMD duopoly or ARM.
Note that ASML machines will stop working if not continuously supplied with replacement parts, software fixes, and calibrations. The machines are incredible complicated on every level.
The West's weak reaction to Russia invading Ukraine has made an invasion of Taiwan likely.
One year later and Russia still occupies parts of Ukraine, Putin is still in power and while Russia has suffered losses due to their own incompetence, Russia itself has barely suffered (well, anymore than its usual state). Russian oligarchs and the family of Russia politicians are still allowed to live in the west as well...
If China's only consequences would be sanctions, they'll gladly take it since half the world cares only about their own needs and would still trade with them, sacrificing Ukraine, Taiwan and others for cheap goods...
Readit News
It is unfortunate the truth and decent analysts dont get enough press coverage because they dont fit the narrative of current trend.
- The only way to understand the Press is to remember that they pander to their readers' prejudices.
It makes sense that there would be literal conspiracies a work in this situation. If I were in Taiwan, I would assume that the US plant represents some sort of threat to the geopolitical status quo. Regardless of what some analyst thinks.
I think they're counting on the ruling class / landowners / capitalists to pressure the government to capitulate at fear of property destruction, which I also expect to be in line with reality. Doing capitalism in a country like taiwan is better than in the PRC, but doing it in the PRC is better than not being able to do it at all because all your assets were obliterated.
What I think none of these people are counting on is that there are rabidly anti CPC people here in Taiwan, leftist or otherwise, and some of these people engage in post-military service training and drilling. I suspect that if the above comes to pass and the CPC is successful in forcing an ROC surrender, the factories are burning one way or the other, due to "self-sabotage" by workers or guerillas.
Then the PLA gets to have fun for a decade chasing guerillas around the choking thick jungle and mountains that make up the majority of the landmass in Taiwan. Many of these will be indigenous who have lived in the mountains for generations and per capita by demographic make up more of the (non conscripted) military than any other demographic.
I don't think any of this will come to pass though because I, like most people in Taiwan (including the usa consulate staff), believe the possibility of invasion is slim.
The other problem is that China is way more dependent on outside trade than Russia. They rely on food and energy imports too much, while Russia is self sufficient in both. The same sanctions as on Russia would bring China to its knees in months. In case anyone say “but everyone was saying the sanctions on Russia would cripple them too”, no, not everyone was saying that. The same magazine, The Economist, was explaining why that wasn’t going to happen right from the start.
Will that work if the politicians work from home?
On the recent Brazilian uprising, when the election losers stormed the capital they found out that it is a holiday and there’s no some special object in the government buildings which makes you the new leader once you physically obtain it.
All they ended up doing was vandalism.
However, for some reason I don't understand, a significant portion of people from PRC are expecting a war to happen, and ridiculously believing such a war can be good to them. Maybe CPC is playing the old game again, posturing the "pro-democracy" entities as hostile in the propaganda to gain support politically.
Goes along with the mock presidential palace. https://thediplomat.com/2015/08/satellite-imagery-from-china...
Taiwan is not Somalia. It's a fairly advanced country with a fairly good military (comparing to its size).
> I think they're counting on the ruling class / landowners / capitalists to pressure the government to capitulate at fear of property destruction, which I also expect to be in line with reality. Doing capitalism in a country like taiwan is better than in the PRC, but doing it in the PRC is better than not being able to do it at all because all your assets were obliterated.
China will do worse than Russia. People in Ukraine had reasons to join Russia, ie: their country is very corrupt and poor. I highly doubt the rich and educated Taiwanese will want to join the CPC.
> I don't think any of this will come to pass though because I, like most people in Taiwan (including the usa consulate staff), believe the possibility of invasion is slim.
The possibility is very slim at the moment. Of course, timing matter. In the future, it could go both ways. That will depend on the status of the US, China and Taiwan itself.
CPC knows taking over Taiwan is costly to them, and it is not a good deal. It is not like we are so much better at analyzing the situation better than professionals.
There’s a paradox here. The more everyone believes this, the worse the preparations are and the more likely invasion becomes.
For instance, the RoC Army doesn’t have enough soldiers or the right equipment and pretty much everyone is ok with this because hey, possibility of invasion is slim. They prioritise buying vanity hardware like fighter planes instead of weapons that fit a porcupine strategy like Javelin missiles. (Porcupines don’t attack but defend really well).
You correctly point out that guerrillas can fight the PLA thanks to terrain. But that would be more realistic if they had a large supply of Javelins.
Hilariously it will make Taiwan more vulnerable because it makes defending the island less necessary. During the cold war the enduring question was: is America willing to commit mass suicide to protect Western Europe if the USSR invades? Thankfully we never got a definitive answer on that.
"You are either with us or you are with the terrorists"
China can only invade Taiwan to start ww3, and only if it is ready to use nukes pretty soon.
This move by TSMC doesn't weaken the shield, but it weakens the spear. The most likely defender of Taiwan against an aggressor would be the U.S. military. Having a native chipmaking capability somewhat reduces the U.S.'s interest in intervening.
What it doesn't do is incentivize aggression against Taiwan. The likely aggressors would lose access to chips to fuel their economies as long as TSMC doesn't aid or allow those countries to build local fabs.
Economic arguments for war being irrational and therefore unlikely have a history of falling flat on their face. Most infamously, this claim was made about major wars in Europe right before the First World War: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion
News coverage of China is asinine, vacillating between the WSJ/Gordon Chang “the communists are about to collapse” nonsense and the “General <x> says the Chinese are aggressively aggressive and catching up” patter. The chip bullshit is all about Intel lobbying for billions to pull its nuts out of the fire.
IMO Chinese policy is methodical and not unlike what the RAND people cooked up in the 1960s. They make investments in Africa and Latin America that benefit China, build up a military power as deterrence, and have a trade relationship with the US and Europe that transformed the nation from a decrepit backwater into a global power in 50 years.
Why would they want a pyrrhic victory (or defeat that would damage the Beijing government) in Taiwan? Taiwan isn’t Hong Kong. Aggressive rhetoric and policy accomplishes political objectives, and the long game is to foment instability in Taiwan and wait it out.
The risk of conflict with China is North Korea and Japan, not Taiwan.
It seems unlikely that US and west would get involved in a direct major military conflict with China, no matter what. The costs are too great. It is far more likely that they would only provide military equipment and intelligence (like Ukraine).
So this move of TSMC actually strengthens the shield a lot more than it weakens the spear.
At this point, an attack on Taiwan is an attack on the USA. I suspect China is very much aware of this.
Deleted Comment
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34417336
Is there any other than China?
I still lean towards a "no hot war" scenario because the PRC's demographic structure is deteriorating just like Russia's, and Putin has already demonstrated a lesson with the war in Ukraine.
A war would be a great distraction for the local population. The inevitable sanctions and disruption of chip production would excuse poor GDP growth. To top it off, a "glorious victory" (Pyrrhic victory) is pretty likely. The U.S. has global reach, but it's still not as logistically feasible for the U.S. to fight from staged forces in Japan and the Philippines as it is for China to fight from their home territory.
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/xi-jinping-speech-suggests-china-in...
I can't see an invasion happening without massive loss of life on both sides and destroying Taiwan's value. Perhaps their plan is to conduct a massive long-term blockade. This would be more in-line China's typical actions of being aggressive in diplomacy and in stretching the boundaries of international law. If they outnumber the US in the Pacific what can the US do but watch? The US almost certainly would be unwilling to fire the first shot.
In contrast, Hitler made Germans feel like they were heading for a better place so he garnered support, Xi though, doesn't seem as charismatic and popular. So it's going to be a much harder sell to start an all out hot war over something that means basically nothing to 99% of the population.
Also invading a country is one thing, hanging onto it is another, Syria, Afganistan, Vietnam etc for example. China isn't exactly going to make friends taking the country by force.
Unification
You can’t reunify something that wasn’t unified before.
I firmly believe in the odds of a hot war being extremely low until the children of high ranking CCP officials start a mass exodus from their comfy white collar lives in the Western world, much like Putin recalling his yachts on the eve of the war in Ukraine.
2 H-6 nuclear-capable bombers flew south of the island during this combat drill.
The last military combat drill was in late December. They have been ramping up in aggression.
China’s recent actions have been increasingly provocative, but it’s erroneous to state that there were incursions into Taiwanese airspace.
I don't expect that China will make a move yet though, they also are building capital ships, like Aircraft Carriers, and also producing ship killing Hypersonic Missiles.
So the nature is that China is preparing for a fight. Hopefully it's just bluster.
The Chinese need a full compliment of carriers to enforce a total blockade of the island and effective hypersonic anti-ship missiles to fend off US capital ships. The launch platform (H-6N) for the hypersonics is already in their arsenal. When the carriers and missiles are available it's all over for Taiwan. This is less than 4-5 years out as China is urgently working on both.
Meanwhile the US is developing LRASM, Rapid Dragon and others specifically for this scenario. The missing piece is a really long range anti-aircraft missile to threaten the H-6 fleet without exposing nuclear powered US capital ships to Chinese weapons. The F-14 would have been an ideal platform for this.
Ultimately though, unless the US is willing to go all-out kinetic with China over Taiwan there is no hope. It's a small island 100 miles off the coast of an enormous, powerful, wealthy enemy with an epic chip on its shoulder, and its key ally is on the wrong side of the Pacific.
Smart money can see this so advanced fabs are popping up all over the West.
Number of ships is very misleading (though popular among American reactionaries). I could buy 1,000 canoes and have more 'ships' than the US Navy.
Taiwan buying US equipment yields $$$ for the US. TSMC building fabs in Arizona yields $$$ for TSMC and the US. China selling manufactured goods to Taiwan and the US yields $$$ for China. Media/influencers writing panic-bait to hype up engagement metrics yields $$$ for content creators and shareholders. $$$ is the only thing that matters for every entity involved in this situation.
It’s heated up dramatically with Xi stating a few months ago that “China will take back Taiwan in the next 10 years”.
You can get much more certain than literally one of the actors verbally stating it’s a goal.
Event in Russia/Ukraine make us realize war can be started anytime.
And never mind the whole "Taiwanese are not genetically pure Chinese übermenschen so we must find a final solution for them" https://twitter.com/pybaubry/status/1447466780717289476
And after Pelosi's visit a few months back things have only heated up.
For a long time China was relatively diplomatic about Taiwan. They claimed it was part of China, but they also didn't go out of their way to say "we will take it by any means necessary".
Who knows where this will end ... maybe it'll all be very anti-climatic, or maybe not ... But it's certainly a bit hotter than it was before.
For a long time, the US has been content treating Hawaii as a tourist destination and military base, but should the federal government laws apply there?
If I were Taiwan, I’d be buying as many Javelins and Stingers and whatnot the world can manufacture.
I assume one of them is “provide enough support to make China bleed heavily, remove anything of value, but don’t start WW3”
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31625160 (June 2022)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29655736 (Dec 2021)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29569298 (Dec 2021)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29547334 (Dec 2021)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27477147 (June 2021)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22272727 (Feb 2020)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20072367 (June 2019)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19936285 (May 2019)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16103742 (Jan 2018)
And I honestly don't see how you're taking it as being flamebait. Could you point out why it comes across that way? (It's been flagged, so I assume that you weren't the only one who read it that way...)
You rate-limited me, and bumping against that from time to time has been a good reminder to not flame people. I have been trying to watch both my words and my attitude when posting. As I said, I wasn't trying for flamebait here - more for a bit of a joke. (Yeah, I know, I know, guidelines on that too...)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC-Vhttps://www.msn.com/en-xl/news/other/tech-war-china-bets-on-...
To me this sounds like the US is adopting a bet on entrenched monopolies in Intel and TSMC while China is making a bid for open source architectures (I wouldn't say that there are "good guys" and "bad guys" here, only that in the Machiavellian sense the US has first mover advantage in chips and is engaged in import restrictions and RISC-V is a new standard).
I worry that this could have implications for Taiwan if they lose the geopolitical advantage of having a monopoly on chip production. I'm also concerned that the US administration could be placing big bets for the economy on shoring up tech firms that may become outdated when the chip making market becomes competitive again internationally.
Thoughts?
One year later and Russia still occupies parts of Ukraine, Putin is still in power and while Russia has suffered losses due to their own incompetence, Russia itself has barely suffered (well, anymore than its usual state). Russian oligarchs and the family of Russia politicians are still allowed to live in the west as well...
If China's only consequences would be sanctions, they'll gladly take it since half the world cares only about their own needs and would still trade with them, sacrificing Ukraine, Taiwan and others for cheap goods...
Dead Comment