I'd argue they(CPP) don't even need to worry about the fabs. Let's face it, if the invasion happened and it wasn't a 3 day military operation, they need to be c

I'd argue they(CPP) don't even need to worry about the fabs. Let's face it, if the invasion happened and it wasn't a 3 day military operation, they need to be careful. Even if they somehow managed to basically teleport to Taiwan and take the entire area with little to no resistance, they have to be restrained in the use of force or risk disturbing the entire fab floors. Sure they got seismic protection but who knows how well that will handle nearby energetics going off. Let's say some act of divine intervention happened, and they take the entire facilities with zero resistance and no one sabotaging the cleanrooms.....they still need to have the know how to use, operate, and export those chips. If the US and EU block chip exports then Afric, Russia, and the middle east will be the only potential customers left. TSMC makes chips not equipment, and they only manufactured the chips. AFAIK they don't actually create the chip design or the photomask etc. Which means TSMC would have a useless supply chain in the CCP hands. Would it be a major setback, and a global supply chain crisis given chips are in everything.....yes. But the IP, the trade secrets, Eu and american intelligence has probably already captured any critical assets just in case this were to happen. In fact if this were to happen, I would see America totally profiting off this, which is another reason China dosnt do anything. They know if they take Taiwan and tsmc, America will pump so much money into make US chips that the covid money printing would look like pocket change. It would enable america to capture the production even more, and you just know that the US and other countries would ban semiconductor chemicals and key raw materials that the Chinese need to keep tsmc running. If they capture the ASML machines they probably would not use them to make more chips, it would be a better idea to disassemble every devices inside a fan, recover every document, so they can reverse engineer the technology and not rely on ASML or foreign hardware. The non credible defense: TSMC has built-in talks of pure HF and anhydrous hydrazine that can instantly douse the entire machines so as to destroy the major details in case they were ever to get captured. Lord knows they got plenty of hazardous chemicals laying around.