71 ms·
90%! Did we really let ourselves become so reliant on Ukraine and Taiwan for computer chips? Taiwan being the next country most under threat. In fact, Reuters
by atlantas 5y ago
90%! Did we really let ourselves become so reliant on Ukraine and Taiwan for computer chips? Taiwan being the next country most under threat.
In fact, Reuters just reported that "Taiwan warns Chinese aircraft in its air defence zone"
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/taiwan-reports-nine-chinese-aircraft-its-air-defence-zone-2022-02-24/ https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/taiwan-reports-ni...
- Rebelgecko 5y agoDoesn't that happen on more or less a weekly basis?
- agilob 5y agoYes, why does it still happen on a weekly basis?
- monkeywork 5y agoBecause their airspace extends over mainland china...
- Rebelgecko 5y agoWhy would it stop? Not sure how the Chinese military works, but presumably their pilots need a certain # of flight hours to stay current. It's not like there's really a downside for China
- actuator 5y agoEvery time they do this Taiwan has to scramble their own jets in the air. So most likely it is to test Taiwan's response times and wear out their aircrafts. Each flight of those fighter jets adds to a maintenance cost on top of the fuel costs, which is disproportionately higher for Taiwan considering the size of the economy.
- rootusrootus 5y agoIndeed it apparently costs close to 10% of their military budget just to respond to Chinese incursions. That's a heck of an incentive.
- newuser94303 5y agoThat makes sense. Most of China's military policy seems to be economic. They make cheap subs for defense. US buys really expensive subs so they can attack. They spend some money their military and all the countries around them spend more money on their military. The other countries get poorer since military investment returns nothing so they have to borrow from China for critical infrastructure.
- actuator 5y agoNot really, it is well alleged that CCP has a lot of military spending off the books. So the % figure of GDP we see might be higher. Also, China's posturing is not just defensive but has an offensive side as well, as seen by the naval bases it has been trying to build across the world, even in Africa.
- cloudwizard 5y agoChina has 1 small Navy base in Africa. China is a long way away from having a blue water navy. There is a lot of fear mongering in the US from Admirals that want a bigger Navy. China has never conducted a Naval operation. As of today, Beijing has just one overseas military base in Djibouti – a country which also hosts American, French, Italian and Japanese military bases, some of which also host British, German and Spanish troops. https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2020/08/31/chinas-overseas-military-bases/ https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2020/08/31/chinas-overseas-milita...
- agilob 5y ago>So most likely it is to test Taiwan's response times and wear out their aircrafts Rings a bell, Russians were doing it on Baltic sea for over a decade, and president of Estonia was called paranoiac
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Pulcinella 5y agoTaiwan’s “Air Defense Identification Zone” extends over mainland China. Though it seems it mostly cares about incursions in the southwest corner. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_defense_identification_zone#Taiwan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_defense_identification_zon...
- roughly 5y agoBut we saved some money by shuttering all our factories and outsourcing everything, so, who's to say what the right answer was. (/s)
- 34ylkjj45y 5y ago
- mym1990 5y ago"We saved some money" is how economics works in price competitive markets. This is a result of many players doing what keeps each one competitive, but without collaborating on what the large scale effects are down the road.
- roughly 5y agoAutonomous agents responding to their environments can create some really wondrous outcomes and also some really, really stupid ones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_mill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_mill
- baq 5y agoeconomists have a certain tendency to disregard tail events, which happen much more often than they think, as they don't follow the normal distribution. there's been a plethora of six sigma market movements in the past few years, and six sigma by definition should happen once every 3 million observations or so...
- lazide 5y agoML models do the same thing - it’s over fitting.
- stingraycharles 5y agoAnd most importantly, economics assumes that the market is perfect, which it most certainly is not in practice. What we didn’t do enough is take the geopolitical landscape into this equation (or a potential pandemic, for that matter), which I hope changes after recent developments. I blame the governments mostly for this, I completely understand the businesses needing to do what’s best for business.
- livinglist 5y agoas a Chinese raised in China myself, this happens pretty regularly since years ago. I don’t think Winnie the Pooh has big balls to attack Taiwan in recent future. China has too much to lose right now.
- yumraj 5y ago> I don’t think Winnie the Pooh has big balls to attack Taiwan in recent future. Not disagreeing with you, but I think people generally incorrectly assume that a dictator with absolute power thinks and acts rationally.
- deltaonefour 5y agoIronically, I think the above statement is irrational. Why does being a dictator automatically make you more irrational? Absolute power has no direct causal bearing on human intelligence. It does not make you more irrational or more rational. There are plenty of examples of good kings, bad kings, good emperors and bad emperors throughout history both for ancient china and plenty of other civilizations. Modern China, despite all the negative press, has done plenty of rational things in order to get toe to toe with the US as both a military and economic rival. I think the negative connotation associated with the word dictator paints anyone labeled with it in a biased light. Not saying anything bad or good about pooh bear in general. Whatever that man is, him being a dictator is not a causal origin of his current character.
- baq 5y agodictators are blind. a single person does not have the mental nor technological capacity to run everything. they must delegate. the way dictarships work is the dictator's subordinates, friends, whatever, must live in constant fear of each other, so they are incentivized to lie (or at least omit truths) to the dictator. a benevolent dictatorship doesn't exist, because no benevolent person would survive the process of getting dictatorship. decisions based on falsehoods may look irrational from the outside. of course, putin may very well be getting plain crazy. certainly no shortage of normal civilian russians admit it off the record.
- tiahura 5y ago
- PaywallBuster 5y agoI'd say its mostly about specialization There could be 100s of companies selling NEON gas, but only a handful is producing NEON gas purified to the degree required by semiconductor industry. In this case, it seems only one is supplying semiconductors
- godelski 5y agoIf you're a small country in a dangerous position isn't this probably the best strategy you can do?
- arcticbull 5y agoThis was I believe one of the major goals of TSMC. Even if it wasn't (and my memory isn't serving me with a link) it certainly has that effect now.
- mvc 5y agoAre we in favor of economics/capitalism here or are we not? Because the economics literature is quite clear that international trade is beneficial to all involved. It's what we insist that developing countries focus on exports when loaning them money. For many years, Taiwan has been the poster child that we point to when trying to change the ways of Cuba or Venezuela. Are these principles so weak that we would allow a dictator who doesn't even have the support of his own people to shake them?
- blackbear_ 5y ago> Because the economics literature is quite clear that international trade is beneficial to all involved. If you narrowly focus on economics, yes. But what are other consequences, outside of economics? By outsourcing everything, you lose control. You allow uncontrollable external factors to affect you. You open yourself to be blackmailed. So in a way yes, those principles are weak because they are incomplete. They do not take into account the full range of possibilities that can happen in the real world.
- munk-a 5y agoIn theory by allowing private entities to run these businesses you're also losing control. If you need absolute control then what you're asking for is a command economy - I lean toward socialism but that's a bridge too far for me. Some supply chain instability is the result of allowing healthy economic activity especially when the modern goods we're talking about are immensely complex and require incredible specialization to reasonably manufacture.
- lazide 5y agoAny theory which does not take into account a country manipulating a market so it can get a monopoly on a key economic element for other countries, then use that to subjugate or conquer them is a hopelessly naive theory.
- maybelsyrup 5y ago> economics/capitalism lmao
- wyldfire 5y agoGlobal trade has been a peacekeeping incentive for decades. But despots don't act for the sake of the people's will, so it's not easy to account for that. But anyways most markets are emergent, not planned strategically .
- e40 5y agoMy non-expert POV says the problem isn't global trade it's unbalanced global trade. Everyone depends on China, so Xi has little incentive to fear economical reprisals.
- buscoquadnary 5y agoI've heard that repeatedly and I used to believe it to; however I have been recently studying WW1 and found out there were many people back then who said pretty much the same thing. They said that no one would want a war things were too profitable and there was too much trade, they were terribly terribly wrong. The problem is WW1 wasn't one big "let's go to war" like Hitler and WW2, WW1 was the effects of hundreds of little consequences, edge cases, and constraints upon individuals and nations that interacted in a way no one could see. I believe the same thing will happen again, and it will probably come as a result of a Pakistani-Indian conflict or something from Iran. It isn't something anyone can see right now, but its coming, just like no one would've guessed the assassination of an Archduke would lead to 10 million dead across Europe, in the same way it will be something we can't determine right now that will push upon the constraints, agreements and edge cases to push us towards another global war.
- philipkglass 5y agoNeon is used in excimer lasers that generate ultraviolet light. These lasers are used in photolithography and for annealing amorphous silicon to polycrystalline silicon in flat panel display manufacturing. Laser manufacturers and users already faced a Ukrainian neon crisis during the last round of fighting and made changes to reduce consumption of fresh neon: https://www.photonicsonline.com/doc/how-one-light-source-manufacturer-overcame-the-neon-crisis-0001 https://www.photonicsonline.com/doc/how-one-light-source-man... https://www.gigaphoton.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/2017_Excimer-laser-gas-usage-reduction-technology-for-semiconductor-manufacturing.pdf https://www.gigaphoton.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/2017_E... I expect that neon price spikes this time are going to impact laser users less than they initially did back in 2015 since lasers now require less fresh neon.
- analog31 5y agoPerhaps not as important but the humble helium neon laser is also still an important practical standard for position measurement at submicron accuracy.
- 34ylkjj45y 5y ago
- e40 5y agoHow? Short vs long-term thinking. And Xi moving on Taiwan at the start of increased activities in Ukraine was the thing feared the most. What a shitshow it would be if China invaded Taiwan. The pandemic shortages would pale in comparison.
- cbfrench 5y agoIt’s worth noting that Chinese incursions into Taiwan’s ADIZ are a routine occurrence and don’t really represent any increase in aggression above the baseline: “On Wednesday (February 23), two Chinese military jets flew into Taiwan's air defence identification zone (ADIZ), marking the 12th intrusion this month.” https://www.wionews.com/world/two-chinese-fighter-jets-enter-taiwans-air-defence-zone-456169/amp https://www.wionews.com/world/two-chinese-fighter-jets-enter...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ceejayoz 5y agoIn part, because Taiwan's ADIZ extends over mainland China. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:JADIZ_and_CADIZ_and_KADIZ_in_East_China_Sea.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:JADIZ_and_CADIZ_and_... (ADIZs are also unilateral and not something set up in international law; they're basically a request)
- WillPostForFood 5y agoI agree these stories should not be overblown, and have been a regular occurrence. It isn’t a worrisome escalation. But it is incorrect to say they are happening because the ADIZ extends over Chinese territory. The repeated incursions are out over the ocean, most commonly over the SW corner of the ADIZ which is not over mainland China. China is doing it intentionally, and is both testing and prodding Taiwan.
- ceejayoz 5y agoTo be clear, though, under international law China has every right to fly in those areas. Just like when we fly/sail 12 miles off Russia, or send ships past the islands China's making in the South China Sea. When we do it, it's a "freedom of navigation" exercise. Yes, it's testing air defenses, but it frustrates me when officials breathlessly act like it's a big deal.
- akmittal 5y agoI see same case with companies moving to aws
- gjsman-1000 5y agoDo you want a scary thought? Imagine if Taiwan gets invaded and China manages to steal all of America's computer chip designs. Technology problems solved.
- honkycat 5y agoIt is so disgusting to me that we allowed our oligarch class to de-industrialize our country and ship all of the jobs and everything we built overseas. 100 years of industrialization and worker movements gutted, abandoned, and disassembled with the help of our two-faced neo-liberal[0] government. And for what? 40 years of profit for the 1%? And then encountering the fact that we have outsourced ourselves into a profound strategic weakness in the international markets. 0: As in: Both sides, globalization. Not as in Dem vs Republican.
- xadhominemx 5y agoNeon purification and leading edge chip manufacturing concentrating in Ukraine and Taiwan respectively have nothing to do with neoliberalism. The former is a historical accident rooted in soviet space laser initiatives, and the latter is because TSMC executed technology development better than western, Japanese, and Korean competitors
- zucker42 5y agoThe nature of globalism is that there's many steps in the supply change that are dependent on one or two countries. Semiconductors are also dependent on the Netherlands (ASML) for example. Also violations of the air defense zone, though not meaningless, are not super important. The air defense zone covers a part of mainland China larger than Taiwan, as well as waters that might at least be considered international waters. News articles about that are pretty pointless.
- croes 5y agoWould we care without these dependencies?
- Maximus9000 5y agoStockpiling is another option if you rely on something critical that is difficult to produce at home.
- rootsudo 5y agoI wonder what great name they'll think up next. Operation Iraqi Liberation. OIL. What fits CHIP?
- ComradePhil 5y agoChinese Hostility Intervention Plan?