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It makes Taiwan less strategic in time. It makes Taiwan more strategic now, because the US is still dependent on TSMC. If China has hostile intent it also incr
by TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
It makes Taiwan less strategic in time. It makes Taiwan more strategic now, because the US is still dependent on TSMC.
If China has hostile intent it also increases the risk of Chinese action, because - dependent on stockpiles and security - Taiwan is a resource choke point which could potentially decapitate the entire US military machine.
This is a terrible situation for the US to be in.
As the US replaces that capability on its home turf Taiwan's strategic value wanes, which paradoxically makes an attack less likely because China can get what it wants from Taiwan by conventional economic and political means.
The question is... how lucky/aggressive does China feel? And how just-in-time is the US military supply chain?
- selimthegrim 6y agoI doubt all the defense critical military electronics are fabbed over there on 10 nm
- monocasa 6y agoThey're increasingly into ML inference at the edge, which benefits from (and sometime requires) smaller nodes.
- gowld 6y agoYou and I like smaller nodes because they are more cost effective. The military doesn't really worry much about price.
- monocasa 6y agoSort of. At the gate counts we're talking, it doesn't take long until you can't even fit the chip on a whole wafer of an older node. IIRC, an Nvidia GA100 doesn't fit on a 300mm 65nm wafer (to say nothing of being able to clock it at a viable speed even if you were to cut it down). Going off chip destroys perf for a lot of designs too. It's not just a price component, but a performance and viability of new designs one, at a time where the DoD internally is pushing ML hard as a major pillar of investment in weapons technology.
- totalZero 6y agoIt's not just the military supply chain. Imagine the economic shockwaves if we weren't able to buy new computers in the US, just for a short time.