7 ms·

Biden to sign order to build 'China-free' tech supply chain

147 points by fireball_blaze 6y ago

Shivetya 6y ago
Relying on Taiwan is akin to putting all your eggs in one basket. There is too much in one region of the world where a totalitarian regime with a sordid human rights record has a significant military presence and threatens Taiwan with regularity. What happens when China rolls over Taiwan? Will the US support its ally as per treaty or will it turn a blind eye? What will the EU do? So far the world seems content to issue only proclamations against their treatment of the Uighur and the world is deafeningly silent about Hong Kong anymore. The only way to protect the supply chain is to make more world wide that it currently is and Africa and South and Central America are ripe for bringing up their standard of living as well as the rights of their populations.
- frequentnapper 6y ago
  I think it would be a good thing to do so since then we have much more motivation to protect Taiwan at all costs. China trying to roll over Taiwan would be akin to attacking us.
- 0xy 6y ago
  America has no choice but to defend Taiwan with the full weight of their resources, because losing Taiwan means they've lost access to the most important resource in the world. Chips are more important than anything. America has nothing without them.
  - eloff 6y ago
    The fabs would be a write off in any prolonged conflict. So they're not actually a good reason to defend Taiwan. I think America would defend them anyway out of a sense of righteousness and pride. They wouldn't let China give them a black eye like that without hitting back. But could they actually prevail in the region? I'm not sure about that.
    - myrandomcomment 6y ago
      You are half right. The US will have to defend Taiwan otherwise we are done as a world power. Taiwan is not a push over. Any invasion would be seen way ahead of time. The Taiwan military is pretty dug in from the beaches to the mountains. They just need to make it painful enough and long enough for the US to bring its military might on target. Taiwan itself has the missile power to reach Shanghai and Beijing, and I have no doubt they would use it.
      - thoughtstheseus 6y ago
        A traditional invasion may happen but is unlikely. China is already flying military planes into Taiwan airspace regularly. The goal is to wear them down, create unsustainable costs, and expand its regional hegemony to the area whereby any/all conflict over Taiwan is strategically already won by China. They’ll likely wait them out or make it painful enough that people ask for it.
        myrandomcomment 6y ago
        Well no. They are flying into the ADIF zone and being driven off. If they crossed into the the 12 mile limit of the main island they would be shot down. China knows that. The fact is the military is really good at doing the same thing over and over again everyday. Any really escalation would result in the US actively placing support in Taiwan. China is playing a dangerous game. Their action all over the world and at home are going to drive the world into supporting more contact not less with Taiwan. Xi Jinping is not playing a very Chinese game. He is pushing too hard on every front because he is impatient. Long term this is going to break.
        thoughtstheseus 6y ago
        Purposely and repeatedly flying military aircraft to generate a military response is my main point. Thank you for clarifying where they have been flying. In my discussions with Taiwanese people they’ve cited these provocations as a cost, problem, threat, etc. Would they be shot down? That remains to be seen. The U.S. is not in a great position to support Taiwan. The overwhelming majority of U.S. military tech is for projecting power, not cost effectively defending.
  - blackrock 6y ago
    So.. you’re saying that you want to play with nukes? And hope that your own American city doesn’t get atomized in the exchange?
  - swebs 6y ago
    Right, but that's exactly why the parent comment said putting manufacturing in Taiwan is a bad idea.
- federona 6y ago
  US should be ready to do for Taiwan what the UK did for Hong Kong, move their best and brightest to US with Visas and path to citizenship if China were to ever take over.
  - krustyburger 6y ago
    If it happens, it will be quick. And there are vast numbers of very valuable Taiwanese people. Setting aside the moral difference that the UK fundamentally had no reason to be governing part of China (except the legacy of their empire), whereas Taiwan arguably has every right to govern itself, I don’t think this would provide much relief if China decides to pounce.
- totalZero 6y ago
  > What happens when China rolls over Taiwan? The US can't even keep Venezuela and Cuba in line. The concept that the US would use direct military confrontation to stop China from simply taking Taiwan is very unlikely in my opinion. Short of granting them statehood, Taiwan and its push for total freedom from China will crumble eventually. Our policy should be to buy time, clone what Taiwanese infrastructure we need, and offer a path to US citizenship to current Taiwanese residents and their children. The approach now should just be to build infrastructure in the Americas and invite Taiwanese companies to bring over their institutional knowledge and partake. Taiwan doesn't have to be our flash point versus China. There is so much potential for advancement in the Western hemisphere, yet we sink all our resources into unwinnable bullshit because we're afraid of taking an Asia-Pacific L in pursuit of a greater American W.
  - goatinaboat 6y ago
    The US can't even keep Venezuela and Cuba in line. What do you mean by “in line”? Those countries are little more than nuisances in global geopolitics. If either of them seriously threatened US interests or key allies they would be rolled over as quickly as Iraq was in GW1.
  - MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
    My thoughts exactly. Look at what happened to Europe in the 30s. Germany just started occupying places left and right. Even when they occupied Poland they still did nothing but defend.
- petre 6y ago
  > What will the EU do? They'll be gravely concerned. What did they do about the Karabah conflict? Not much. President Macron tried to talk them out of it when everybody else sat and watched helplessly, but it was already too late and Russia had to step in creating yet another Transnistria type of region. Germany has a conflict of interest in dealing with China because their economy depends on selling cars to the Chinese. And all of them already got their hands full with the pandemic. This is arguably the best time in the last 60 years for China to roll over Taiwan. The US will get involved, sure. Maybe Japan too but I'm not so sure about that now that Mr. Abe has resigned.
- nyxtom 6y ago
  Isn't TSMC building a plant in Arizona? And Samsung's plant in Texas too?
BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 6y ago
Xi Jinping is an even more powerful existential motivator for Taiwan's "Ready! Aye Ready! " attitude to whatever the US desires. In any case, it's long past time that the US wake up to the fact that the wholesale handover of manufacturing capability to China has put the US in a position of strategic weakness. It's like a pre WWII handover of aircraft manufacturing capability to Hitler. As for chips, who really knows what secret doors are being put into Chinese chips - not to say that the CIA is not up to the same game.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
zshift 6y ago
It should be clear by now that China is a single-point-of-failure for many industries globally. This is a step in the right direction, and I hope other countries follow suit.
- federona 6y ago
  Sounds like decent rhetoric to not get into the geopolitical aspects of this fight. Just write it off as diversifying the supply chain and then cut your biggest problem supplier out because they are not good for business.
- reddotX 6y ago
  European nations have signed a commitment to invest up to $145bn in local design and production of processors and semiconductors. https://www.eenewseurope.com/news/145bn-boost-europes-semiconductor-industry https://www.eenewseurope.com/news/145bn-boost-europes-semico...
brundolf 6y ago
In addition to improving national security, with any luck this would have an effect of opening the door for stronger foreign policy against the CCP's human rights violations. It is so, so far past time the world stopped kissing the ring for the sake of our manufacturing dependency.
- 0x1DEADCA0 6y ago
  This was considered a GOP talking point not 3 months ago
  - brundolf 6y ago
    Trump's unwillingness to roll over for the CCP might be the only thing about him that I supported, though even then he executed on it in about the most hamfisted ways possible. He just butted heads with Xi, and honestly, China has more raw economic momentum than we do, and I don't really think a sanctions-war is a winning strategy right now. What Biden's doing is much smarter; he's patching up one of our biggest actual weaknesses which made the sanctions stalemate extra painful. It sounds like he's also prioritizing getting the rest of our allies in on it (instead of fracturing our ties with them), which is a great thing to be doing. In some ways I think Europe/Japan/Korea/Australia are going to decide which of us will be the next superpower. If we go all isolationist, and Europe gets cozy with China as a result, the contest is over. Strategy and preparation are better than bluster and Twitter-insults.
    - imposterr 6y ago
      I don't know if I'd call it an unwillingness to roll over, or simply political theatre. Here are some quotes from [0] >“He then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win,” >“Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do.” >Bolton says he was so alarmed by Trump’s determination to do favors for autocrats such as Erdogan and Xi that he scheduled a meeting with Attorney General William P. Barr in 2019 to discuss the president’s behavior. Bolton writes that Barr agreed he also was worried about the appearances created by Trump’s behavior. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-asked-chinas-xi-to-help-him-win-reelection-according-to-bolton-book/2020/06/17/d4ea601c-ad7a-11ea-868b-93d63cd833b2_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-asked-chinas-x...
joemazerino 6y ago
Picking Taiwan is a brilliant strategical choice.
- flukus 6y ago
  Anywhere in the south china sea is not a great strategic choice. Apart from mainland China itself this will be the first area of the world where China will reach military parity with the US. The US has a lot more firepower but that's deployed globally.
  - malandrew 6y ago
    What is valuable is not just developing relations with countries in the South China Sea like Taiwan, but also encouraging many allies to do so as well so that it's far more politically risky for China to mess with Taiwan and others in the South China Sea. Right now, Beijing thinks it can get away with anything. The situation needs to materially change so Beijing only alienates itself if it acts aggressively.
- petre 6y ago
  I'm not so sure about that. If chairman Xi decides to invade or blockade Taiwan you have a supply chain problem.
  - yongjik 6y ago
    On the other hand, if Xi decides to blockade Taiwan then he can't pretend that it won't hurt the US, so it will be seen as an act of aggression. Of course, the US may grumble and let China take it... or it may not. That prospect should give any wannabe Taiwan taker a pause. Japan ostensibly started the Pacific War to secure its oil supply. Supply chains are serious business.
    - austhrow743 6y ago
      Taiwan exists as a country because of the US’ refusal to let them take it.
totalZero 6y ago
These headlines don't mean anything whatsoever until Biden and Congress show up with a briefcase full of money. This isn't an expensive problem to solve. TSMC's 3nm fab (slated to open next year) was estimated to cost just under $20B [0] back in 2018 when the project began. To put that number in perspective, Apple has spent $528B [1] on share buybacks and dividends in the past decade. I surmise that a Taiwan-centric military conflict would cost the US far more than either of those two figures. In light of the recent storms in Texas, a federally run power plant that serves only semiconductor fabs could be built in Austin TX as a first step. [0] https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3600724 https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3600724 [1] https://s2.q4cdn.com/470004039/files/doc_financials/2021/q1/Q121-Return-of-Capital-Timeline.pdf https://s2.q4cdn.com/470004039/files/doc_financials/2021/q1/...
- rsj_hn 6y ago
  Unfortunately money can't be converted into chip fabs so easily. Building a chip fab requires brains, a functioning corporate culture that rewards and promotes said brains, and large scale cooperation to work towards a common goal as specified by said brains. If Intel was able to build a chip at a price that would yield profitable stream of chips, then they would have no trouble funding said chip fab. There is no shortage of investment dollars here. The US has more than enough investment capacity to do this. But Intel can't execute, and when you can't execute, the amount of money thrown at a project is irrelevant. What's more, there are very few organizations that have both the human capital and are able to out-execute TSMC when it comes to building chip fabs, and it's almost certain than none of them are in the US, even though we have our own printing press that can generate as many dollars as are needed, yet it still wont be enough paper to deal with the brain-organization gap. Real things are built with real resources, such as organizational capacity, organizational talent, intelligence, solidarity, focus, tenacity, and long term thinking. You can run the printing presses all day long, and you're not going to get a world-competitive chip fab if you lack these. But if you have them, the funding issues will take care of themselves, as investors will beat down the door to lend you money, which is what happened when Noyce first announced he was starting his own company.
  - 6y ago
NicoJuicy 6y ago
The only way I see forward in the short term is "made in india 2025" ( it's not realistic, but the intent is to increase priority. A deadline soon shows the need) It's the only country that wages can handle a long increase by capitalism ( = companies) to move production ( wages, ... ) They are more western minded. They are with plenty of people. --- The other way would be to ignore globalization and claim that companies would love production to higher wage countries. ( got downvoted into oblivion the previous time i mentioned my thoughts > 4 years ago. At least say where you would tweak the argument or give a better solution instead of only saying problems. If you have a better solution, great. Let's hear it and say what problem it could solve or where I'm wrong. I'm here to discuss and learn)

Relying on Taiwan is akin to putting all your eggs in one basket. There is too much in one region of the world where a totalitarian regime with a sordid human rights record has a significant military presence and threatens Taiwan with regularity. What happens when China rolls over Taiwan? Will the US support its ally as per treaty or will it turn a blind eye? What will the EU do? So far the world seems content to issue only proclamations against their treatment of the Uighur and the world is deafeningly silent about Hong Kong anymore. The only way to protect the supply chain is to make more world wide that it currently is and Africa and South and Central America are ripe for bringing up their standard of living as well as the rights of their populations.

frequentnapper 6y ago
I think it would be a good thing to do so since then we have much more motivation to protect Taiwan at all costs. China trying to roll over Taiwan would be akin to attacking us.
0xy 6y ago
America has no choice but to defend Taiwan with the full weight of their resources, because losing Taiwan means they've lost access to the most important resource in the world. Chips are more important than anything. America has nothing without them.
- eloff 6y ago
  The fabs would be a write off in any prolonged conflict. So they're not actually a good reason to defend Taiwan. I think America would defend them anyway out of a sense of righteousness and pride. They wouldn't let China give them a black eye like that without hitting back. But could they actually prevail in the region? I'm not sure about that.
  - myrandomcomment 6y ago
    You are half right. The US will have to defend Taiwan otherwise we are done as a world power. Taiwan is not a push over. Any invasion would be seen way ahead of time. The Taiwan military is pretty dug in from the beaches to the mountains. They just need to make it painful enough and long enough for the US to bring its military might on target. Taiwan itself has the missile power to reach Shanghai and Beijing, and I have no doubt they would use it.
    - thoughtstheseus 6y ago
      A traditional invasion may happen but is unlikely. China is already flying military planes into Taiwan airspace regularly. The goal is to wear them down, create unsustainable costs, and expand its regional hegemony to the area whereby any/all conflict over Taiwan is strategically already won by China. They’ll likely wait them out or make it painful enough that people ask for it.
      - myrandomcomment 6y ago
        Well no. They are flying into the ADIF zone and being driven off. If they crossed into the the 12 mile limit of the main island they would be shot down. China knows that. The fact is the military is really good at doing the same thing over and over again everyday. Any really escalation would result in the US actively placing support in Taiwan. China is playing a dangerous game. Their action all over the world and at home are going to drive the world into supporting more contact not less with Taiwan. Xi Jinping is not playing a very Chinese game. He is pushing too hard on every front because he is impatient. Long term this is going to break.
        thoughtstheseus 6y ago
        Purposely and repeatedly flying military aircraft to generate a military response is my main point. Thank you for clarifying where they have been flying. In my discussions with Taiwanese people they’ve cited these provocations as a cost, problem, threat, etc. Would they be shot down? That remains to be seen. The U.S. is not in a great position to support Taiwan. The overwhelming majority of U.S. military tech is for projecting power, not cost effectively defending.
- blackrock 6y ago
  So.. you’re saying that you want to play with nukes? And hope that your own American city doesn’t get atomized in the exchange?
- swebs 6y ago
  Right, but that's exactly why the parent comment said putting manufacturing in Taiwan is a bad idea.
federona 6y ago
US should be ready to do for Taiwan what the UK did for Hong Kong, move their best and brightest to US with Visas and path to citizenship if China were to ever take over.
- krustyburger 6y ago
  If it happens, it will be quick. And there are vast numbers of very valuable Taiwanese people. Setting aside the moral difference that the UK fundamentally had no reason to be governing part of China (except the legacy of their empire), whereas Taiwan arguably has every right to govern itself, I don’t think this would provide much relief if China decides to pounce.
totalZero 6y ago
> What happens when China rolls over Taiwan? The US can't even keep Venezuela and Cuba in line. The concept that the US would use direct military confrontation to stop China from simply taking Taiwan is very unlikely in my opinion. Short of granting them statehood, Taiwan and its push for total freedom from China will crumble eventually. Our policy should be to buy time, clone what Taiwanese infrastructure we need, and offer a path to US citizenship to current Taiwanese residents and their children. The approach now should just be to build infrastructure in the Americas and invite Taiwanese companies to bring over their institutional knowledge and partake. Taiwan doesn't have to be our flash point versus China. There is so much potential for advancement in the Western hemisphere, yet we sink all our resources into unwinnable bullshit because we're afraid of taking an Asia-Pacific L in pursuit of a greater American W.
- goatinaboat 6y ago
  The US can't even keep Venezuela and Cuba in line. What do you mean by “in line”? Those countries are little more than nuisances in global geopolitics. If either of them seriously threatened US interests or key allies they would be rolled over as quickly as Iraq was in GW1.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
  My thoughts exactly. Look at what happened to Europe in the 30s. Germany just started occupying places left and right. Even when they occupied Poland they still did nothing but defend.
petre 6y ago
> What will the EU do? They'll be gravely concerned. What did they do about the Karabah conflict? Not much. President Macron tried to talk them out of it when everybody else sat and watched helplessly, but it was already too late and Russia had to step in creating yet another Transnistria type of region. Germany has a conflict of interest in dealing with China because their economy depends on selling cars to the Chinese. And all of them already got their hands full with the pandemic. This is arguably the best time in the last 60 years for China to roll over Taiwan. The US will get involved, sure. Maybe Japan too but I'm not so sure about that now that Mr. Abe has resigned.
nyxtom 6y ago
Isn't TSMC building a plant in Arizona? And Samsung's plant in Texas too?

BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 6y ago

Xi Jinping is an even more powerful existential motivator for Taiwan's "Ready! Aye Ready! " attitude to whatever the US desires. In any case, it's long past time that the US wake up to the fact that the wholesale handover of manufacturing capability to China has put the US in a position of strategic weakness. It's like a pre WWII handover of aircraft manufacturing capability to Hitler. As for chips, who really knows what secret doors are being put into Chinese chips - not to say that the CIA is not up to the same game.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

zshift 6y ago

It should be clear by now that China is a single-point-of-failure for many industries globally. This is a step in the right direction, and I hope other countries follow suit.

federona 6y ago
Sounds like decent rhetoric to not get into the geopolitical aspects of this fight. Just write it off as diversifying the supply chain and then cut your biggest problem supplier out because they are not good for business.
reddotX 6y ago
European nations have signed a commitment to invest up to $145bn in local design and production of processors and semiconductors. https://www.eenewseurope.com/news/145bn-boost-europes-semiconductor-industry https://www.eenewseurope.com/news/145bn-boost-europes-semico...

brundolf 6y ago

In addition to improving national security, with any luck this would have an effect of opening the door for stronger foreign policy against the CCP's human rights violations. It is so, so far past time the world stopped kissing the ring for the sake of our manufacturing dependency.

0x1DEADCA0 6y ago
This was considered a GOP talking point not 3 months ago
- brundolf 6y ago
  Trump's unwillingness to roll over for the CCP might be the only thing about him that I supported, though even then he executed on it in about the most hamfisted ways possible. He just butted heads with Xi, and honestly, China has more raw economic momentum than we do, and I don't really think a sanctions-war is a winning strategy right now. What Biden's doing is much smarter; he's patching up one of our biggest actual weaknesses which made the sanctions stalemate extra painful. It sounds like he's also prioritizing getting the rest of our allies in on it (instead of fracturing our ties with them), which is a great thing to be doing. In some ways I think Europe/Japan/Korea/Australia are going to decide which of us will be the next superpower. If we go all isolationist, and Europe gets cozy with China as a result, the contest is over. Strategy and preparation are better than bluster and Twitter-insults.
  - imposterr 6y ago
    I don't know if I'd call it an unwillingness to roll over, or simply political theatre. Here are some quotes from [0] >“He then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win,” >“Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do.” >Bolton says he was so alarmed by Trump’s determination to do favors for autocrats such as Erdogan and Xi that he scheduled a meeting with Attorney General William P. Barr in 2019 to discuss the president’s behavior. Bolton writes that Barr agreed he also was worried about the appearances created by Trump’s behavior. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-asked-chinas-xi-to-help-him-win-reelection-according-to-bolton-book/2020/06/17/d4ea601c-ad7a-11ea-868b-93d63cd833b2_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-asked-chinas-x...

joemazerino 6y ago

Picking Taiwan is a brilliant strategical choice.

flukus 6y ago
Anywhere in the south china sea is not a great strategic choice. Apart from mainland China itself this will be the first area of the world where China will reach military parity with the US. The US has a lot more firepower but that's deployed globally.
- malandrew 6y ago
  What is valuable is not just developing relations with countries in the South China Sea like Taiwan, but also encouraging many allies to do so as well so that it's far more politically risky for China to mess with Taiwan and others in the South China Sea. Right now, Beijing thinks it can get away with anything. The situation needs to materially change so Beijing only alienates itself if it acts aggressively.
petre 6y ago
I'm not so sure about that. If chairman Xi decides to invade or blockade Taiwan you have a supply chain problem.
- yongjik 6y ago
  On the other hand, if Xi decides to blockade Taiwan then he can't pretend that it won't hurt the US, so it will be seen as an act of aggression. Of course, the US may grumble and let China take it... or it may not. That prospect should give any wannabe Taiwan taker a pause. Japan ostensibly started the Pacific War to secure its oil supply. Supply chains are serious business.
  - austhrow743 6y ago
    Taiwan exists as a country because of the US’ refusal to let them take it.

totalZero 6y ago

These headlines don't mean anything whatsoever until Biden and Congress show up with a briefcase full of money. This isn't an expensive problem to solve. TSMC's 3nm fab (slated to open next year) was estimated to cost just under $20B [0] back in 2018 when the project began. To put that number in perspective, Apple has spent $528B [1] on share buybacks and dividends in the past decade. I surmise that a Taiwan-centric military conflict would cost the US far more than either of those two figures. In light of the recent storms in Texas, a federally run power plant that serves only semiconductor fabs could be built in Austin TX as a first step. [0] https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3600724 https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3600724 [1] https://s2.q4cdn.com/470004039/files/doc_financials/2021/q1/Q121-Return-of-Capital-Timeline.pdf https://s2.q4cdn.com/470004039/files/doc_financials/2021/q1/...

rsj_hn 6y ago
Unfortunately money can't be converted into chip fabs so easily. Building a chip fab requires brains, a functioning corporate culture that rewards and promotes said brains, and large scale cooperation to work towards a common goal as specified by said brains. If Intel was able to build a chip at a price that would yield profitable stream of chips, then they would have no trouble funding said chip fab. There is no shortage of investment dollars here. The US has more than enough investment capacity to do this. But Intel can't execute, and when you can't execute, the amount of money thrown at a project is irrelevant. What's more, there are very few organizations that have both the human capital and are able to out-execute TSMC when it comes to building chip fabs, and it's almost certain than none of them are in the US, even though we have our own printing press that can generate as many dollars as are needed, yet it still wont be enough paper to deal with the brain-organization gap. Real things are built with real resources, such as organizational capacity, organizational talent, intelligence, solidarity, focus, tenacity, and long term thinking. You can run the printing presses all day long, and you're not going to get a world-competitive chip fab if you lack these. But if you have them, the funding issues will take care of themselves, as investors will beat down the door to lend you money, which is what happened when Noyce first announced he was starting his own company.
- 6y ago

NicoJuicy 6y ago

The only way I see forward in the short term is "made in india 2025" ( it's not realistic, but the intent is to increase priority. A deadline soon shows the need) It's the only country that wages can handle a long increase by capitalism ( = companies) to move production ( wages, ... ) They are more western minded. They are with plenty of people. --- The other way would be to ignore globalization and claim that companies would love production to higher wage countries. ( got downvoted into oblivion the previous time i mentioned my thoughts > 4 years ago. At least say where you would tweak the argument or give a better solution instead of only saying problems. If you have a better solution, great. Let's hear it and say what problem it could solve or where I'm wrong. I'm here to discuss and learn)