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Sure we could all use more positive visions for the future, but... The most immediate need we have to Taiwan is TSMC. Without them Nvidia, AMD and Apple are ef

Sure we could all use more positive visions for the future, but... The most immediate need we have to Taiwan is TSMC. Without them Nvidia, AMD and Apple are effectively dead, along with any car company, and a good deal of the products and services we use. A war with China would make 2008, 9/11 and the Internet bubble look, like tiny blips in terms of economic upheaval. What bothers me most are three misconceptions about the ramifications of an invasion: The first is that people don't recognize how important TSMC is, and how much its hardware powers. The second is that people think US/European firms could just do the same. The skills, effort, time and money that TSMC has put in to be where they are is not easily replicated and we would happy if we could do it in 10 years, but that is doubtful. The third is that China could just take over and run TSMC. You cant build chips in a warzone. And even if Chine would take over swiftly, and the infrastructure would be largely intact, each fab has thousands of employees, and all it takes for one of them to sabotage a fab is to cough in the wrong place, and it may never run again, and it would need to be abandoned. You do not need to smuggle in a bomb to disrupt a fab. Even if they did keep some fabs running, they wouldn't sell the output to the west. On the upside, I get the feeling someone in the know has given the right presentation at the white house, because Biden looks like he understands this and takes this seriously, unlike many others.

aa-jv 3y ago
The third thing is, what if there is no need to invade? Taiwan is a liability, on the grand scheme of things. We need to not have a concentration of such vital capability in a single source. The cost of an invasion or the cost of booting up fabs in more Western nations - or even in the global south? This is the real question. War will only happen when the decision is made that its cheaper to steal a factory than build another new one. This is not always the focus of the conversation when it comes to the hegemonic power of China's ability to make things... but it should. Especially when The Western Empire™ makes decisions about the values of other states ..
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  Do you really think the The Chinese Empire™ cares about TSMC? Generations have now been told Taiwan is and forevermore is a part of China, to be reunited. The existence of TSMC matters little. Once you connect a regime's domestic prestige to a project, external motivations matter little. Once not attacking Taiwan is seen as a "being weak" at home, you will have a war.
  - mcny 3y ago
    I thought the prevailing meta for why Russia attacked Ukraine was that there is a window of opportunity that is rapidly shrinking and if they don't do it now, Russia will never be able to do it again. If China PR believes the same, we have big problems. My hope is that the Xi administration believes that going to war and losing will cause them to lose power to domestic mainland opportunists. It might be naive but then couldn't we say the same thing about mutually assured destruction (mad)?
Throwfi44 3y ago
I don't really understand why China would even invade Taiwan. They would be killing "their own" people, and destroying "their own" infrastructure (by their perception). Much better option is some sort of economic war, sanctions, naval blockade... US is importing a lot from China, even factories in Mexico are just assembling Chinese parts. I do not think support for Taiwan would survive for very long.
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  People had the same arguments for not invading Ukraine.
  - Throwfi44 3y ago
    We are 18 months into war, but electric grid and rail network are still functional. You can go to Kiev for weekend break from Poland in overnight train...
    - _ph_ 3y ago
      They are still functional, because of the heroic defense by the Ukrainian people and quick rebuilding. Russia was explicitly targeting and quite a lot destroying the Ukraine electric infrastructure. Unfortunately it looks like they are stockpiling rockets to repeat those attacks in this winter. A strong support by the west also helped Ukraine to fight back a lot.
- android521 3y ago
  just look at chinese history (or the history of most nations), you would find tons and tons of examples of chinese rulers killing tens of thousands of other chinese people in pointless wars for pointless reasons.
  - konart 3y ago
    >pointless wars for pointless reasons. They may look pointless to _you_ at the _present_ time. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
_hao 3y ago
> The first is that people don't recognize how important TSMC is, and how much its hardware powers. TSMC might be the the best and ahead of everyone in technological sense, but there are enough semiconductor companies worldwide to handle a potential TSMC demise. So what if our hardware stops improving at breakneck speeds (which might happen anyway in the near future..)? I can argue that would be a good kick in the ass for every software dev that writes shitty bloated code. People like that won't be able to "just add more CPUs" to their problem and they'll have to do some actual engineering again. The state of software dev and performance today is abysmal given the amazing hardware we have.
- quelsolaar 3y ago
  TSMC is dominant in technology AND volume. It chip shortage would be massive. Redesigning everything that has a TSMC chip in it to use something else would be a massive undertaking. What do you think the stock market would say if Apple announced that they could not make a iPhone/Mac until they redesign they hardware to use intel chips, because the only other manufacturer of chips good enough is Samsung, and they wont sell chips to their competitor?
  - _hao 3y ago
    > TSMC is dominant in technology AND volume. It chip shortage would be massive. Redesigning everything that has a TSMC chip in it to use something else would be a massive undertaking. That's true and yet I'd say that's not my problem? The market will be fine. If anything that means more software work for me. New opportunities will arise. People won't buy a new phone every year for a while (which is objectively a good thing!). The M series MacBooks are so good now there's virtually no reason to upgrade to M2 or M3 if you have the M1 (like in my case). I fully expect to use this computer for the next decade. My desktop PC is basically unchanged since I built it in 2016 (+1 extra SSD I've added after, but that was it). The i7-6700K in there is still chugging happily along. Apple have more than $100 billion of cash at hand. They will be fine no matter what happens. It's not like they didn't change chips before :)
    - 3y ago
rat87 3y ago
People don't realize how little TSMC matters when it comes to the invasion of Taiwan. Sadly economics and free trade rarely stop nationalist wars. If anything stops it it will be the inherent difficulty in invading an army and the risk of failure (especially risk to the regime if it fails, it has seen how Russia and Putin have been weakened by the full-scale invasion of Ukraine)
dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
> The first is that people don't recognize how important TSMC is I think the US government understands this very clearly, that's why it's prepared to defend Taiwan. There is some strategic ambiguity, but the relevant parties understand that the US would protect Taiwan with its own military.

aa-jv 3y ago

The third thing is, what if there is no need to invade? Taiwan is a liability, on the grand scheme of things. We need to not have a concentration of such vital capability in a single source. The cost of an invasion or the cost of booting up fabs in more Western nations - or even in the global south? This is the real question. War will only happen when the decision is made that its cheaper to steal a factory than build another new one. This is not always the focus of the conversation when it comes to the hegemonic power of China's ability to make things... but it should. Especially when The Western Empire™ makes decisions about the values of other states ..

actionfromafar 3y ago
Do you really think the The Chinese Empire™ cares about TSMC? Generations have now been told Taiwan is and forevermore is a part of China, to be reunited. The existence of TSMC matters little. Once you connect a regime's domestic prestige to a project, external motivations matter little. Once not attacking Taiwan is seen as a "being weak" at home, you will have a war.
- mcny 3y ago
  I thought the prevailing meta for why Russia attacked Ukraine was that there is a window of opportunity that is rapidly shrinking and if they don't do it now, Russia will never be able to do it again. If China PR believes the same, we have big problems. My hope is that the Xi administration believes that going to war and losing will cause them to lose power to domestic mainland opportunists. It might be naive but then couldn't we say the same thing about mutually assured destruction (mad)?

Throwfi44 3y ago

I don't really understand why China would even invade Taiwan. They would be killing "their own" people, and destroying "their own" infrastructure (by their perception). Much better option is some sort of economic war, sanctions, naval blockade... US is importing a lot from China, even factories in Mexico are just assembling Chinese parts. I do not think support for Taiwan would survive for very long.

actionfromafar 3y ago
People had the same arguments for not invading Ukraine.
- Throwfi44 3y ago
  We are 18 months into war, but electric grid and rail network are still functional. You can go to Kiev for weekend break from Poland in overnight train...
  - _ph_ 3y ago
    They are still functional, because of the heroic defense by the Ukrainian people and quick rebuilding. Russia was explicitly targeting and quite a lot destroying the Ukraine electric infrastructure. Unfortunately it looks like they are stockpiling rockets to repeat those attacks in this winter. A strong support by the west also helped Ukraine to fight back a lot.
android521 3y ago
just look at chinese history (or the history of most nations), you would find tons and tons of examples of chinese rulers killing tens of thousands of other chinese people in pointless wars for pointless reasons.
- konart 3y ago
  >pointless wars for pointless reasons. They may look pointless to _you_ at the _present_ time. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

_hao 3y ago

> The first is that people don't recognize how important TSMC is, and how much its hardware powers. TSMC might be the the best and ahead of everyone in technological sense, but there are enough semiconductor companies worldwide to handle a potential TSMC demise. So what if our hardware stops improving at breakneck speeds (which might happen anyway in the near future..)? I can argue that would be a good kick in the ass for every software dev that writes shitty bloated code. People like that won't be able to "just add more CPUs" to their problem and they'll have to do some actual engineering again. The state of software dev and performance today is abysmal given the amazing hardware we have.

quelsolaar 3y ago
TSMC is dominant in technology AND volume. It chip shortage would be massive. Redesigning everything that has a TSMC chip in it to use something else would be a massive undertaking. What do you think the stock market would say if Apple announced that they could not make a iPhone/Mac until they redesign they hardware to use intel chips, because the only other manufacturer of chips good enough is Samsung, and they wont sell chips to their competitor?
- _hao 3y ago
  > TSMC is dominant in technology AND volume. It chip shortage would be massive. Redesigning everything that has a TSMC chip in it to use something else would be a massive undertaking. That's true and yet I'd say that's not my problem? The market will be fine. If anything that means more software work for me. New opportunities will arise. People won't buy a new phone every year for a while (which is objectively a good thing!). The M series MacBooks are so good now there's virtually no reason to upgrade to M2 or M3 if you have the M1 (like in my case). I fully expect to use this computer for the next decade. My desktop PC is basically unchanged since I built it in 2016 (+1 extra SSD I've added after, but that was it). The i7-6700K in there is still chugging happily along. Apple have more than $100 billion of cash at hand. They will be fine no matter what happens. It's not like they didn't change chips before :)
  - 3y ago

rat87 3y ago

People don't realize how little TSMC matters when it comes to the invasion of Taiwan. Sadly economics and free trade rarely stop nationalist wars. If anything stops it it will be the inherent difficulty in invading an army and the risk of failure (especially risk to the regime if it fails, it has seen how Russia and Putin have been weakened by the full-scale invasion of Ukraine)

dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago

> The first is that people don't recognize how important TSMC is I think the US government understands this very clearly, that's why it's prepared to defend Taiwan. There is some strategic ambiguity, but the relevant parties understand that the US would protect Taiwan with its own military.