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While semiconductors are a very important part of industry, it's naive to think that a loss of Taiwanese output would be as disastrous as this article suggests.
by pcrh 5y ago
While semiconductors are a very important part of industry, it's naive to think that a loss of Taiwanese output would be as disastrous as this article suggests.
Consider the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, they are much larger than any such loss would have, yet this pandemic didn't have any acute large-scale effect on geopolitics (though it will like have a longer-term, and some what unpredictable effect).
A much larger long-term effect of China's ambitions towards Taiwan would likely be seen in China's growing economic might resulting in a shifting of alliances/allegiances of East Asian countries between the US and China.
- tooltalk 5y agoConsidering TSMC's share of chip fabrication business, it would be fairly disruptive. TSMC does have the dominant position in the sub-7nm cutting-edge processing nodes, used primarily by companies like Apple, Qualcomm and nVidia, but at least some of them, Qualcomm and nVidia, have been diversifying their sources (primarily to Samsung) while Apple seems to have everything in one basket. But then, who cares about Apple?
- canadianfella 5y ago> But then, who cares about Apple? What do you mean?
- jollybean 5y agoThe Coronavirus has a huge effect, it's just been papered over by massive Central Bank Financing. Make no mistake, we are in 'Willy Wonka' land with respect to currency. The reason it hasn't lead to geopolitical fallout is because 'everyone is in the same boat'. If 'just Canada' did this ... even with a pandemic, Canada would be getting trashed on the markets, major downgrades, the fallout would peter into a lot of things and there's no question at least the government would probably fall. If if were acutely a China-Taiwan issue then all of a sudden the world's eyes would be on that as the source of the issue an it would cause a pretty big realignment. This would be 10x more amplified were there a military component. It's one thing for there to be a flummox over a virus, but China 'invading' countries would basically be such a strong signal ... it would be the demarcation point for literally a New World Order. Future historians would count the end of WW2 up until then as maybe a single era, with that event starting a new one. All the chess pieces would be moved or adjusted.
- pcrh 5y agoI quite agree that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be a "new world order" event, but I'm sceptical that a loss of Taiwanese Fabs would be the same.
- jollybean 5y agoYes, that's it. The article almost embarrassingly equates Taiwan with Fabs. It makes sense from a certain perspective but in the big picture it's not that big of a deal. In 400 years, Taiwan's political status will be relevant, ASIC fabs will be a footnote.