17 ms·

World War 3 to Be Fought over Semiconductors?

70 points by jsmcgd 5y ago

uselesscynicism 5y ago
The US must protect Taiwan, a sovereign nation, from the Communist threat.
rapsey 5y ago
> China's manufacturing economy AND its military are entirely dependent on foreign-sourced semiconductors Everyone else's military is also.
- tut-urut-utut 5y ago
  >> China's manufacturing economy AND its military are entirely dependent on foreign-sourced semiconductors > Everyone else's military is also. Great. So if we are losing a war anyway, let's hit the enemy very hard by destroying the semiconductor industry. Same tactic as some nuclear powers' doctrine, “if our country is going to be destroyed, let the world end too".
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > Same tactic as some nuclear powers' doctrine, “if our country is going to be destroyed, let the world end too" This is a strange reading of deterrence. Both MAD and credible minimum deterrence.
atlasunshrugged 5y ago
Peter Zeihan (American geopolitical strategist) recently did a short video on this (3 mins). Tl;Dr: He's not worried because supply chains will re-order https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sXu0nZoamk&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sXu0nZoamk&feature=youtu.be
brink 5y ago
The unilateral lockdowns were not worth it.
rhino369 5y ago
Fighting a war over an industry reliant on large, immobile, extremely vulnerable factories/laboratories is really, really, really, really, really, really, really stupid. If China invaded Taiwan to controls fabs, the USA would just destroy them with air power. And that's assuming Taiwan didn't sabotage them first.
- est31 5y ago
  I read somewhere that the fabs are already equipped with bombs that can be made to explode if there is an invasion from China. Considering how clean those places have to be in order to work, this can cause immense damage to those fabs.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    IIRC the fabs are Dutch made too, so it’s not clear if you could rebuild them with knowledge and material in Taiwan alone.
    - est31 5y ago
      Yeah thanks to the fact that you need international collaboration to scale cutting edge semiconductor manufacturing it's very unlikely that a single nation, even if they discovered general AI, could terrorize the world with an autonomous robot army, because even general AI needs chips to run on.
  - marcyb5st 5y ago
    Not sure they have bombs but they are pretty delicate. In reality China has another option. They could just demand semiconductors or else they would close the tap on rare-earth elements [1] and by doing so crashing the economy. Even more so if they annex/invade Vietnam. Other countries have availability, but only China has the supply chain to extract and process these elements at scale. For any other player to step up production to match current demand it would take years. [1] https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/geopolitics-rare-earth-elements https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/geopolitics-rare-eart...
giantg2 5y ago
"World War 3 to Be Fought over Semiconductors?" No. Supply might play a part in a conflict, but I don't see this as being the cause. "China's manufacturing economy AND its military are entirely dependent on foreign-sourced semiconductors." Why would they risk a global conflict that would weaken its military that would implicitly be weak from a shortage? The only reason I could see them taking this approach is if the foriegn suppliers stop providing the chips and they don't ramp up their own production during an existing conflict, backing them into a corner to take over production in another country (good luck having those facilities intact and staffing them).
- indymike 5y ago
  > (good luck having those facilities intact and staffing them) This is the problem with the whole "take Taiwan for the semiconductor industry" line of thinking. China needs foreign scapegoats (it's all _____'s fault that your life sucks) and prizes (look! we took back what is rightfully ours) so it can keep control of it's increasingly oppressed people.
Factorium 5y ago
The political and military 'elite' of the USA have been compromised. If there is a hot war with China, it will be one that America has been pre-arranged to lose, as part of a transition in hegemony. https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2021/09/21/double-trouble-for-biden-494411 https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2021/09/21/dou... Joe Biden and son are corrupt https://www.dailynews.com/2021/09/19/patriot-or-traitor-milley-must-go/ https://www.dailynews.com/2021/09/19/patriot-or-traitor-mill... The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has said openly he would coordinate with the Chinese against America The concept of nations bribing individuals to sway World Wars occurred in the last one: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/may/23/mi6-spain-200m-bribes-ww2 https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/may/23/mi6-spain-200m-br... "MI6 spent the present-day equivalent of more than $200m bribing senior Spanish military officers, ship owners and other agents to keep Spain out of the second world war" Spain entering WW2 on the Axis side would have meant the Allies would be completely locked out of the Mediterranean, and probably changed the course of history. Bribing foreign government officials yields great ROI! History has other examples of Autocratic competitors using Liberal nations' Democratic procedures against them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberum_veto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberum_veto "The liberum veto was a major cause of the deterioration of the Commonwealth political system... when foreign powers bribed Sejm members to paralyze its proceedings, and resulted in the Commonwealth's eventual destruction and the partition of Poland" The State Premiere of Victoria, home to the city (Melbourne) with the world's longest COVID lockdown, signed secret deals to partner with China for infrastructure development: https://www.skynews.com.au/opinion/paul-murray/frightening-stuff-victoria-belt-and-road-agreement-details-released/video/00743c5ac201225178f58f0c3d97f852 https://www.skynews.com.au/opinion/paul-murray/frightening-s... This is a country that America has just agreed to share nuclear technology and submarines with...
- wayneftw 5y ago
  They're not compromised - they're running the show. "Yale group spurs Mao's emergence" [0] [0] https://psypolitics.org/2020/07/05/the-political-career-of-mao-yale-and-the-reorientation-of-thought/ https://psypolitics.org/2020/07/05/the-political-career-of-m...
AcerbicZero 5y ago
I think the order of operations is backwards here. China wouldn’t start a war over semiconductors, but if the supply had already been cut off and internal economic collapse was imminent, it could drive a military response. Something similar to what the oil embargo (arguably) drove Japan to do in 1941. Chinas primary military advantage is that the one or two million PLA soldiers with AKs don’t require semiconductors to be effective and western powers lack the willpower to engage in conventional warfare.
- ladyattis 5y ago
  But they lack a navy sufficient to control the open seas. They can control their territorial waters well enough with their anti-air and anti-naval systems but beyond that they don't have the reach. Basically neither the US nor China can hit each other well enough to make a decisive war so there's no real incentive right now. But I can imagine Xi and company coming up with some nonsensical patriotic reason to get people mad enough to at least embargo the US even if it hurts them more in the long run.
  - xxpor 5y ago
    Why would the US ever engage in a conventional war against a global power ever again? There's a reason why the US hasn't adopted a no first use policy for nukes.
YetAnotherNick 5y ago
This is such a dumb proposition. Even if you get military presence in a country for fab, a fab will loose the competitive advantage in just two years. And there are slots available in fabs that China could easily obtain for money/other deal rather than going for war.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  > a fab will loose the competitive advantage in just two years Not really. First, almost all fabs for modern chipset structures are located in Taiwan which means China won't invade Taiwan for a fab but for all fabs. Second, the market is glowing so white hot that - even assuming China manages to take over all Taiwanese fabs intact and with staff cooperating, which is quite unlikely - there will be more demand than supply for many years to come.
  - YetAnotherNick 5y ago
    Samsung is in South Korea, which is just one generation behind TSMC.
lizknope 5y ago
I think it is more likely that WW3 would be AVOIDED because of semiconductors. The world wants peace so that Taiwan can keep building chips.
WastingMyTime89 5y ago
I haven't watched the video but I can already say no to the question. First, China doesn't want to invade Taiwan for its semiconductors industry. They see Taiwan as part of their territory and view reuniting it with the mainland as the conclusion of the revolution. Also they want control of the Taiwan strait to secure the South China sea. Then, Europe most likely wouldn't follow the USA into a war with China and as colonial empires don't exist anymore neither would Africa so it wouldn't be a world war.
pupppet 5y ago
Why have we placed all our chips on Taiwan? With China muscling in on Taiwan shouldn't the first order of business be setting up chip manufacturing in the US?
anticodon 5y ago
Oil/gas are basic necessities. Without oil and gas it is impossible to continue a war, to feed the population (fertilizers are made from oil and gas, tractors run on oil), to make electricity for the industry and population, to warm houses during winter. Even "green" energy cannot exist without fossil fuels. 30-40 years ago the world wasn't so dependent on semiconductors. If all the semiconductor factories would be destroyed now, it won't be end of the world. They're not required to survive. I'd easily survive the winter without laptop and smartphone. But without heating it would be impossible.
Borrible 5y ago
China won't invade Taiwan because of industrial assets. China has time. Only when it becomes convinced that there is no hope for peaceful reunification will it dare to invade. And it is not clear whether they are even capable of doing so. The last successful amphibious invasion of similar magnitude was D-Day. Keep that hope alive and you have a more relaxed situation in a couple of generations. China must be limited, but it must not be snubbed. The perception of deepening relations between Taiwan and the US diminishes their hopes. They will wait long time, but they won't allow Taiwan to be taken away by a western power.
Grismar 5y ago
The real question there is "would the world go to war with China to protect what is left of Taiwan's freedom?" You only have to look at diplomatic attitudes of the past decades to know that the answer is "of course not". It would certainly cause massive upheaval if China tightened its grip on Taiwan, diplomatic and economic sanctions, a massive shift in semiconductor production, a change in status for other semiconductor producing countries and a delay in the forward march of computing technology. But not World War 3.

70 points by jsmcgd 5y ago

The US must protect Taiwan, a sovereign nation, from the Communist threat.

> China's manufacturing economy AND its military are entirely dependent on foreign-sourced semiconductors Everyone else's military is also.

tut-urut-utut 5y ago
>> China's manufacturing economy AND its military are entirely dependent on foreign-sourced semiconductors > Everyone else's military is also. Great. So if we are losing a war anyway, let's hit the enemy very hard by destroying the semiconductor industry. Same tactic as some nuclear powers' doctrine, “if our country is going to be destroyed, let the world end too".
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > Same tactic as some nuclear powers' doctrine, “if our country is going to be destroyed, let the world end too" This is a strange reading of deterrence. Both MAD and credible minimum deterrence.

atlasunshrugged 5y ago

Peter Zeihan (American geopolitical strategist) recently did a short video on this (3 mins). Tl;Dr: He's not worried because supply chains will re-order https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sXu0nZoamk&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sXu0nZoamk&feature=youtu.be

brink 5y ago

The unilateral lockdowns were not worth it.

rhino369 5y ago

Fighting a war over an industry reliant on large, immobile, extremely vulnerable factories/laboratories is really, really, really, really, really, really, really stupid. If China invaded Taiwan to controls fabs, the USA would just destroy them with air power. And that's assuming Taiwan didn't sabotage them first.

est31 5y ago
I read somewhere that the fabs are already equipped with bombs that can be made to explode if there is an invasion from China. Considering how clean those places have to be in order to work, this can cause immense damage to those fabs.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  IIRC the fabs are Dutch made too, so it’s not clear if you could rebuild them with knowledge and material in Taiwan alone.
  - est31 5y ago
    Yeah thanks to the fact that you need international collaboration to scale cutting edge semiconductor manufacturing it's very unlikely that a single nation, even if they discovered general AI, could terrorize the world with an autonomous robot army, because even general AI needs chips to run on.
- marcyb5st 5y ago
  Not sure they have bombs but they are pretty delicate. In reality China has another option. They could just demand semiconductors or else they would close the tap on rare-earth elements [1] and by doing so crashing the economy. Even more so if they annex/invade Vietnam. Other countries have availability, but only China has the supply chain to extract and process these elements at scale. For any other player to step up production to match current demand it would take years. [1] https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/geopolitics-rare-earth-elements https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/geopolitics-rare-eart...

giantg2 5y ago

"World War 3 to Be Fought over Semiconductors?" No. Supply might play a part in a conflict, but I don't see this as being the cause. "China's manufacturing economy AND its military are entirely dependent on foreign-sourced semiconductors." Why would they risk a global conflict that would weaken its military that would implicitly be weak from a shortage? The only reason I could see them taking this approach is if the foriegn suppliers stop providing the chips and they don't ramp up their own production during an existing conflict, backing them into a corner to take over production in another country (good luck having those facilities intact and staffing them).

indymike 5y ago
> (good luck having those facilities intact and staffing them) This is the problem with the whole "take Taiwan for the semiconductor industry" line of thinking. China needs foreign scapegoats (it's all _____'s fault that your life sucks) and prizes (look! we took back what is rightfully ours) so it can keep control of it's increasingly oppressed people.

Factorium 5y ago

The political and military 'elite' of the USA have been compromised. If there is a hot war with China, it will be one that America has been pre-arranged to lose, as part of a transition in hegemony. https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2021/09/21/double-trouble-for-biden-494411 https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2021/09/21/dou... Joe Biden and son are corrupt https://www.dailynews.com/2021/09/19/patriot-or-traitor-milley-must-go/ https://www.dailynews.com/2021/09/19/patriot-or-traitor-mill... The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has said openly he would coordinate with the Chinese against America The concept of nations bribing individuals to sway World Wars occurred in the last one: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/may/23/mi6-spain-200m-bribes-ww2 https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/may/23/mi6-spain-200m-br... "MI6 spent the present-day equivalent of more than $200m bribing senior Spanish military officers, ship owners and other agents to keep Spain out of the second world war" Spain entering WW2 on the Axis side would have meant the Allies would be completely locked out of the Mediterranean, and probably changed the course of history. Bribing foreign government officials yields great ROI! History has other examples of Autocratic competitors using Liberal nations' Democratic procedures against them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberum_veto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberum_veto "The liberum veto was a major cause of the deterioration of the Commonwealth political system... when foreign powers bribed Sejm members to paralyze its proceedings, and resulted in the Commonwealth's eventual destruction and the partition of Poland" The State Premiere of Victoria, home to the city (Melbourne) with the world's longest COVID lockdown, signed secret deals to partner with China for infrastructure development: https://www.skynews.com.au/opinion/paul-murray/frightening-stuff-victoria-belt-and-road-agreement-details-released/video/00743c5ac201225178f58f0c3d97f852 https://www.skynews.com.au/opinion/paul-murray/frightening-s... This is a country that America has just agreed to share nuclear technology and submarines with...

wayneftw 5y ago
They're not compromised - they're running the show. "Yale group spurs Mao's emergence" [0] [0] https://psypolitics.org/2020/07/05/the-political-career-of-mao-yale-and-the-reorientation-of-thought/ https://psypolitics.org/2020/07/05/the-political-career-of-m...

AcerbicZero 5y ago

I think the order of operations is backwards here. China wouldn’t start a war over semiconductors, but if the supply had already been cut off and internal economic collapse was imminent, it could drive a military response. Something similar to what the oil embargo (arguably) drove Japan to do in 1941. Chinas primary military advantage is that the one or two million PLA soldiers with AKs don’t require semiconductors to be effective and western powers lack the willpower to engage in conventional warfare.

ladyattis 5y ago
But they lack a navy sufficient to control the open seas. They can control their territorial waters well enough with their anti-air and anti-naval systems but beyond that they don't have the reach. Basically neither the US nor China can hit each other well enough to make a decisive war so there's no real incentive right now. But I can imagine Xi and company coming up with some nonsensical patriotic reason to get people mad enough to at least embargo the US even if it hurts them more in the long run.
- xxpor 5y ago
  Why would the US ever engage in a conventional war against a global power ever again? There's a reason why the US hasn't adopted a no first use policy for nukes.

YetAnotherNick 5y ago

This is such a dumb proposition. Even if you get military presence in a country for fab, a fab will loose the competitive advantage in just two years. And there are slots available in fabs that China could easily obtain for money/other deal rather than going for war.

mschuster91 5y ago
> a fab will loose the competitive advantage in just two years Not really. First, almost all fabs for modern chipset structures are located in Taiwan which means China won't invade Taiwan for a fab but for all fabs. Second, the market is glowing so white hot that - even assuming China manages to take over all Taiwanese fabs intact and with staff cooperating, which is quite unlikely - there will be more demand than supply for many years to come.
- YetAnotherNick 5y ago
  Samsung is in South Korea, which is just one generation behind TSMC.

lizknope 5y ago

I think it is more likely that WW3 would be AVOIDED because of semiconductors. The world wants peace so that Taiwan can keep building chips.

WastingMyTime89 5y ago

I haven't watched the video but I can already say no to the question. First, China doesn't want to invade Taiwan for its semiconductors industry. They see Taiwan as part of their territory and view reuniting it with the mainland as the conclusion of the revolution. Also they want control of the Taiwan strait to secure the South China sea. Then, Europe most likely wouldn't follow the USA into a war with China and as colonial empires don't exist anymore neither would Africa so it wouldn't be a world war.

pupppet 5y ago

Why have we placed all our chips on Taiwan? With China muscling in on Taiwan shouldn't the first order of business be setting up chip manufacturing in the US?

anticodon 5y ago

Oil/gas are basic necessities. Without oil and gas it is impossible to continue a war, to feed the population (fertilizers are made from oil and gas, tractors run on oil), to make electricity for the industry and population, to warm houses during winter. Even "green" energy cannot exist without fossil fuels. 30-40 years ago the world wasn't so dependent on semiconductors. If all the semiconductor factories would be destroyed now, it won't be end of the world. They're not required to survive. I'd easily survive the winter without laptop and smartphone. But without heating it would be impossible.

Borrible 5y ago

China won't invade Taiwan because of industrial assets. China has time. Only when it becomes convinced that there is no hope for peaceful reunification will it dare to invade. And it is not clear whether they are even capable of doing so. The last successful amphibious invasion of similar magnitude was D-Day. Keep that hope alive and you have a more relaxed situation in a couple of generations. China must be limited, but it must not be snubbed. The perception of deepening relations between Taiwan and the US diminishes their hopes. They will wait long time, but they won't allow Taiwan to be taken away by a western power.

Grismar 5y ago

The real question there is "would the world go to war with China to protect what is left of Taiwan's freedom?" You only have to look at diplomatic attitudes of the past decades to know that the answer is "of course not". It would certainly cause massive upheaval if China tightened its grip on Taiwan, diplomatic and economic sanctions, a massive shift in semiconductor production, a change in status for other semiconductor producing countries and a delay in the forward march of computing technology. But not World War 3.