4 ms·

I still think this is good for Taiwan’s security. The world is very aware of Chinas growing ambitions, and everyone views Taiwan favorably. Taiwan needs to focu

by audunw 5y ago

I still think this is good for Taiwan’s security. The world is very aware of Chinas growing ambitions, and everyone views Taiwan favorably. Taiwan needs to focus on being viewed as the better partner to liberal democratic countries. I think USA will keep putting troops near or at Taiwan in the coming years. Very slowly as to not create a huge provocation, but still steady. Taiwan doesn’t need the chip card to be considered worth supporting because a war between China and Taiwan will devastate the world economy in a hundred different ways. And regardless, it’ll take many decades before Taiwan isn’t such a large share of world chip production that they’d actually lose that card. Losing even 10% of the worlds cutting edge chip production would be utterly devastating. If China attacks Taiwan, and American troops are harmed, the US will have the justification they need to join the war, and the public support theyd need. I don’t think the US wants to go to war. But they need a threat that’s as credible as possible to deter China.

dirtyid 5y ago
> Losing even 10% of the worlds cutting edge chip production would be utterly devastating. The alternative is losing ~80% of all global chip production on TW, JP, SKR soil if US decides to fight PRC over TW. That's the leverage PRC has in war scenario. Losing leading node is survivable, losing east Asian fab sets globe back decades, and hurts US/western tech industry the most. A fundemental shift in region is US can't deter PRC over TW anymore. And as much as TW is viewed favourably, no one has committed to TW defense and US tried recruiting hard. Even US itself won't give TW security guarantee, and if you follow policy space, strategic thinking has shifted away from TW defense to TW armorer and blockading PRC past 1st island chain - increasing consensus and acknowledgement that TW is simply not defensible. Ultimately, no one wants to goto war and US can't deter PRC. So we have US and other blocs trying to maintain status quo for 10/15/20 years while shifting risk off TW sufficiently to mitigate esclation towards regional semi mutually assured destruction, a crisis much larger than just losing TSMC. Is this good for TW security? IMO it's not.

by audunw 5y ago

dirtyid 5y ago

> Losing even 10% of the worlds cutting edge chip production would be utterly devastating. The alternative is losing ~80% of all global chip production on TW, JP, SKR soil if US decides to fight PRC over TW. That's the leverage PRC has in war scenario. Losing leading node is survivable, losing east Asian fab sets globe back decades, and hurts US/western tech industry the most. A fundemental shift in region is US can't deter PRC over TW anymore. And as much as TW is viewed favourably, no one has committed to TW defense and US tried recruiting hard. Even US itself won't give TW security guarantee, and if you follow policy space, strategic thinking has shifted away from TW defense to TW armorer and blockading PRC past 1st island chain - increasing consensus and acknowledgement that TW is simply not defensible. Ultimately, no one wants to goto war and US can't deter PRC. So we have US and other blocs trying to maintain status quo for 10/15/20 years while shifting risk off TW sufficiently to mitigate esclation towards regional semi mutually assured destruction, a crisis much larger than just losing TSMC. Is this good for TW security? IMO it's not.