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What happens if a war with Taiwan does break out? Who's poised to pick up the slack?

tommoor 3y ago
Literally no-one – the majority of high-tech consumer electronics would stop being produced as soon as existing chips run out.
- greggsy 3y ago
  That’s not true - with the exception of the leading edge nodes, there are other fabs. The question is how easily could they migrate and prioritise the workload?
  - makeitdouble 3y ago
    There's very few of these other fabs outside China. They exist, but aren't able to deliver enough at a global scale. That's what we learned the hard way during the chip shortage a few years ago, where car production for jbstance basically came to a crawl.
a_wild_dandan 3y ago
If that happens, you won't care. You'll be concerned with your personal safety.
tedivm 3y ago
This is part of the reason why you're hearing posts about TSMC expanding out of Taiwan. As it stands today it would be a fairly large economic hit to have advanced processors stop production. Building out redundancy seems to be a top priority. It's also worth noting that in the event of a war the US is very, very likely to bomb the shit out of the TSMC plants. https://www.businessinsider.com/us-would-destroy-taiwan-semiconductor-factories-avoid-china-trump-adviser-2023-3?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/us-would-destroy-taiwan-semi... https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/14/us_china_tsmc_taiwan/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/14/us_china_tsmc_taiwan/
makeitdouble 3y ago
Perhaps Korea or Japan, but in practice nobody, and that's partly by design. Taiwan being the core producer of the super high end chips is guaranteing them that if a war ever happens, they won't be left as sacrifice to the opponent while the rest of the world goes business as usual. They critically need to be a strategic and non replaceable producer.
hnthrowaway0328 3y ago
It's very unpredictable. It might spill to the whole East Asia and then who knows.

Literally no-one – the majority of high-tech consumer electronics would stop being produced as soon as existing chips run out.

greggsy 3y ago
That’s not true - with the exception of the leading edge nodes, there are other fabs. The question is how easily could they migrate and prioritise the workload?
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  There's very few of these other fabs outside China. They exist, but aren't able to deliver enough at a global scale. That's what we learned the hard way during the chip shortage a few years ago, where car production for jbstance basically came to a crawl.

a_wild_dandan 3y ago

If that happens, you won't care. You'll be concerned with your personal safety.

tedivm 3y ago

This is part of the reason why you're hearing posts about TSMC expanding out of Taiwan. As it stands today it would be a fairly large economic hit to have advanced processors stop production. Building out redundancy seems to be a top priority. It's also worth noting that in the event of a war the US is very, very likely to bomb the shit out of the TSMC plants. https://www.businessinsider.com/us-would-destroy-taiwan-semiconductor-factories-avoid-china-trump-adviser-2023-3?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/us-would-destroy-taiwan-semi... https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/14/us_china_tsmc_taiwan/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/14/us_china_tsmc_taiwan/

makeitdouble 3y ago

Perhaps Korea or Japan, but in practice nobody, and that's partly by design. Taiwan being the core producer of the super high end chips is guaranteing them that if a war ever happens, they won't be left as sacrifice to the opponent while the rest of the world goes business as usual. They critically need to be a strategic and non replaceable producer.

hnthrowaway0328 3y ago

It's very unpredictable. It might spill to the whole East Asia and then who knows.