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Without too much condemnation, can you explain to me why I should care living approx 10,000 Km from Taiwan. Without a slippery slope argument, the US invaded A

Without too much condemnation, can you explain to me why I should care living approx 10,000 Km from Taiwan. Without a slippery slope argument, the US invaded Afghanistan and slipped into invading Iraq but didn't continue so it seems slopes are too slippery in this matter.

gjsman-1000 3y ago
Sure. For starters, we'd lose TSMC. Immediately, overnight, there is no supply of Nintendo Switch Game Cards, Apple Silicon Processors, NVIDIA Graphics Cards, MediaTek Tablet Chips, AMD Processors, AMD Graphics Cards, Qualcomm Processors, or Marvell Ethernet Controllers. This is because over 60% of chipmaking, and over 90% of advanced chipmaking (CPUs, FPGAs, etc.), is Taiwan-based. We would still have Intel in America. And that's about it. There's also South Korea as a manufacturer of chips, but their capacity at Samsung is limited, yields haven't been great, and China will be exerting maximum pressure on them. But even Intel would have availability problems, possibly for years, as Taiwanese-made supplementary chips on motherboards for audio, Ethernet, and so forth would not be available. That's just the beginning. It goes without saying that every device that uses computer chips would, almost certainly, be affected. That's if we don't decide to do sanctions on China for the invasion (or them vice-versa), in which case, anything coming from China could be affected as well.
- psychphysic 3y ago
  So if chip-making could be maintained we'd be okay with China taking over Taiwan? Because the sanctions part makes it seem like "it'll be a problem because we'd make it so".
  - gjsman-1000 3y ago
    > Because the sanctions part makes it seem like "it'll be a problem because we'd make it so". If we do anything for helping Taiwan, China will probably sanction us, before the US sanctions them. Imagine if stores like Walmart can't have a single thing that says "Made in China," or contains any component made in China, or "Made in Taiwan," or components from Taiwan. A war of just 1 year in length would have an estimated economic impact of up to 10% of US GDP. That's a recession times five. And that's assuming everything recovers that quickly. We could very easily enter depression. Especially tech like on Hacker News, because every time somebody damages their iPhone or just wears out a battery, there's not a new one available, and there's not even parts for a fix. Or a business computer. Or a business fleet of computers. The optimistic side would say, "well, more domestic manufacturing," but with how entrenched China is, I don't even know if you could get the tools built to even start manufacturing.
    - psychphysic 3y ago
      Fair enough not really the kind of stuff I care about if I'm honest then. We could just not sanction them, while we're at it unsanction Russia for all I care. I'd happily buy their oil if it meant fewer winter deaths.
      - gjsman-1000 3y ago
        I don't necessarily disagree. And I'm not saying the US should or should not help Taiwan. However, if Taiwan is invaded, it will be worse than the pandemic for availability of everything from cars to computers to shipping. The damage would also spread like wildfire if it is prolonged. Imagine if you are UPS and can't get new package scanners. Imagine if you are VISA, a part of your mainframe fails, and there's no parts to replace it, so transactions are delayed or have higher fees to go through. Imagine if you are Lockheed Martin building airplanes with 60,000 engineers. If 10% of your computers fail within 3 years, 6,000 engineers need computers you can't get except for subpar stuff, second hand stuff, often from scalpers, at ludicrous prices. And so forth. It's just all-around terrible economically and it would be felt globally. Global economic depression is quite possible.

gjsman-1000 3y ago

Sure. For starters, we'd lose TSMC. Immediately, overnight, there is no supply of Nintendo Switch Game Cards, Apple Silicon Processors, NVIDIA Graphics Cards, MediaTek Tablet Chips, AMD Processors, AMD Graphics Cards, Qualcomm Processors, or Marvell Ethernet Controllers. This is because over 60% of chipmaking, and over 90% of advanced chipmaking (CPUs, FPGAs, etc.), is Taiwan-based. We would still have Intel in America. And that's about it. There's also South Korea as a manufacturer of chips, but their capacity at Samsung is limited, yields haven't been great, and China will be exerting maximum pressure on them. But even Intel would have availability problems, possibly for years, as Taiwanese-made supplementary chips on motherboards for audio, Ethernet, and so forth would not be available. That's just the beginning. It goes without saying that every device that uses computer chips would, almost certainly, be affected. That's if we don't decide to do sanctions on China for the invasion (or them vice-versa), in which case, anything coming from China could be affected as well.

psychphysic 3y ago
So if chip-making could be maintained we'd be okay with China taking over Taiwan? Because the sanctions part makes it seem like "it'll be a problem because we'd make it so".
- gjsman-1000 3y ago
  > Because the sanctions part makes it seem like "it'll be a problem because we'd make it so". If we do anything for helping Taiwan, China will probably sanction us, before the US sanctions them. Imagine if stores like Walmart can't have a single thing that says "Made in China," or contains any component made in China, or "Made in Taiwan," or components from Taiwan. A war of just 1 year in length would have an estimated economic impact of up to 10% of US GDP. That's a recession times five. And that's assuming everything recovers that quickly. We could very easily enter depression. Especially tech like on Hacker News, because every time somebody damages their iPhone or just wears out a battery, there's not a new one available, and there's not even parts for a fix. Or a business computer. Or a business fleet of computers. The optimistic side would say, "well, more domestic manufacturing," but with how entrenched China is, I don't even know if you could get the tools built to even start manufacturing.
  - psychphysic 3y ago
    Fair enough not really the kind of stuff I care about if I'm honest then. We could just not sanction them, while we're at it unsanction Russia for all I care. I'd happily buy their oil if it meant fewer winter deaths.
    - gjsman-1000 3y ago
      I don't necessarily disagree. And I'm not saying the US should or should not help Taiwan. However, if Taiwan is invaded, it will be worse than the pandemic for availability of everything from cars to computers to shipping. The damage would also spread like wildfire if it is prolonged. Imagine if you are UPS and can't get new package scanners. Imagine if you are VISA, a part of your mainframe fails, and there's no parts to replace it, so transactions are delayed or have higher fees to go through. Imagine if you are Lockheed Martin building airplanes with 60,000 engineers. If 10% of your computers fail within 3 years, 6,000 engineers need computers you can't get except for subpar stuff, second hand stuff, often from scalpers, at ludicrous prices. And so forth. It's just all-around terrible economically and it would be felt globally. Global economic depression is quite possible.