The USA is also willing to defend Taiwan and currently the US has carrier groups in the south China sea. This suggests that the idea of building chips in the US may be a diplomatic courtesy and arguably an incentive.
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Personally, I think we're at the point where the US would consider the costs of Taiwan's defense well beyond any potential benefits. It's too economically integrated with China, and the sheer number of bodies it would take aren't worth the moral victory.
Hong Kong is the writing on the wall. China wishes to restore integrity to what it regards as its territory.
TSMC must open facilities in the west because its Taiwan facilities are too dangerous to leave in enemy hands. It has to invest in capital outside of any potential conflict zone if it plans to exists over the long-term as a profit-making entity.
Is it worth a war that can last many years? By the end of the war, what if US doesn’t need TSMC technology and the tides are reversed?
I’m not conjecturing, I’m shedding light on how much we are willing to risk now vs a few years later. It could also be that Intel fabs fall further behind and TSMC becomes 10x more important than now. Who knows!!!
Instead of war, invest in domestic technology. It pays back better.
The US is routinely running freedom of navigation exercises in the south china sea between taiwan and china and has said as recently as last month that its commitment to defend taiwan is, “rock solid”.
This is all not to mention that taiwan itself would not be all that easy to overthrow, the large majority of people there have unfavorable views of china (and conversely the majority support closer political ties to the US and other free democracies which they have and continue to build).
This may not be likely today, but China has been forced to develop its chip industry in parallel for a long time, and they admit as much if you watch their state-sponsored english-language semiconductor media commentary on YouTube. Eventually they will not need Taiwan nearly as much as America does.
The only way to sidestep that problem is for the US to do the same as Taiwan: use government power and resources to establish a competitive semiconductor hub in the Americas.
Funnily enough, South Korea has done the same in all practical senses. Samsung makes up more of South Korea's GDP in percentage terms than TSMC's share of Taiwan’s GDP. Samsung's trade policy interests are essentially South Korea's trade policy interests.
I don't think this is a popular or maintstream position, nor does the rest of your argument support it.
>The dollars position in the world allows the USA to run its current accounting.
I am not sure what this means. Every nation has a current account. Accounting is just how we track what that account is. Nothing allows accounting to happen, we just do it.
The U.S. is uniquely generous (or from an alternate point of view, uniquely foolish) in allowing the rest of the world to purchase unlimited dollar denominated assets. This makes the U.S. the safe haven for everyone that needs to park export earnings, and thus incentivizes the rest of the world to run huge surplus against the U.S. This is what is meant by "the dollar system". If tomorrow, the European Union would allow unlimited foreign purchases of Euro assets, and provided what is believed to be rule of law and respect for foreign investor rights, then the rest of the world would gladly diversify away from the dollar and the dollar system would end. That was the original vision of the Euro, but the moment there is any crisis, the EMU reveals that it doesn't have the same level of openness for global investment as the U.S., and that dream is proved illusory. So the global dollar system continues, and is in no way dependent on Taiwan or any other exporter. You get to be a reserve currency by importing the most, not by exporting the most.
> Allowing China to take Taiwan destroys the economy and the position of the USA in the world.
It does not affect the economy of the U.S. in either direction, except that the resulting chaos would be bad for markets. Having one foreign export power taken over by another is a null op when determining where can the rest of the world park their money. Of course we may block China from doing it, and that could escalate into a war, which would be disastrous for two nuclear powers, but there are easier ways to punish China -- e.g. seize all their foreign reserve holdings (which are held in custodial accounts in various foreign central banks), block all trade, stop the shipment of any oil. For a nation dependent on exports and dependent on foreign nations allowing China to hold large accounts in their financial system, China is tightly integrated into the global system and uniquely dependent on the good graces of that system. They would have been better off taking physical delivery of silver as in the past.
Not a single bullet needs to be fired to cripple China and destroy its economy. It would also seriously damage the global economy and spread hurt around the world, but this type of economic warfare is better than nuclear war. Whether Taiwan is worth it is a completely different question. But in such a battle, the dollar becomes even more important, not less, as it would be the global safe haven currency (for everyone except China).
It's only a matter of cost: training an american to do the job of a chinese for the same cost is impossible today because american would refuse to produce these under the same condition: they prefer to enjoy using the chips rather than making them.
The good news is that the chinese will eventually come around and start changing their expectation.
If you think China cant change, look at their drastic demographic changes: they can become what we became, they just take longer.
It's funny how most of the semiconductor topics lead to war discussions but no one talks about outcompeting Taiwan. It's doable if there is will and resources (I am a Fab engineer). IMO the best way to move forward.
"Carefully compare the opposing army with your own, so that you may know where strength is superabundant and where it is deficient." Sun Tzu
It's not merely a moral victory. And while I myself would pick up a rifle for 24 million people, it's not even that.
You can't simply let your allies be invaded. It's lethal to all of your other alliances. America failing to defend Taiwan is the end of the Pax Americana, and America knows it.
That's a big asterisk. Biological warfare so far is the stuff of doomsday prognosticators. China isn't crazy enough to use biological weapons because they know we might (possibly even should) consider that a nuclear-level escalation.
And if they did use biological weapons, we might lose Taiwan, but we certainly wouldn't stop fighting. That kind of monstrosity cannot and will not go unanswered.
Hitler couldn't cross the 50 miles english channel back in 1940.... the operation 'sea lion' was doomed to fail. Even the Allies' normandy invasion, was hard and it took total sea and air dominance. China could surround Taiwan and blockade it, but it can't keep that blockaded is itself it would be blockaded by the US and totally sealed internationally. It will be starved economically.
Also, keep in mind, during the cold war, USSR had to give up the sealing/blocading of Berlin, as the US kept supplying it with food via air. The US could have given it away, as it was far from the West's border, but it didn't.
The US will do the same this time, as the public from both sides of the political spectrum, are very against CCP. The only people that string along with China, are some elite media companies like Disney, NBA and of course Apple.
The average Joe doesn't like that their job went to china, and they would be glad if the US put up a fight.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hancock
Is an ancestor. He traded in slaves. He renounced it later. The 3/5 compromise was wrong.
620K people, 2% of the population died in the US civil war. Yet today we have George Floyd.
200 years ago you could argue shades of grey, but in 2021 you cannot not.
I stand for Taiwan because today in 2021 I know better, as should everyone.
Everyone took note.
Taiwan may be 'grabbed' with little violence, and China can promise 'certain freedoms' (i.e fake democracy) so that feckless leaders around the world can 'save face' and say 'oh, we don't like it, but it's not that bad, please keep buying our crap, so we can buy your crap'.
China takes the 'long view' - long enough that it supercedes any populist cycle. Over 30 years of 'soft occupation' and incremental erosion of rights, thery'll be nothing left of Taiwan.
Elderly Gen Z-ers will look back at their tweets from childhood and wonder.
The problem with invading Tawian is that there is a basically a single place where you can land ships on from China. Tawian been preparing for an invasion for years. This means this single point is heavily defended and anyone attacking is on a huge disadvantage. This means there is a huge price to pay to take Tawian and even if you do, there would likely be sanctions from the West.
And the Allies did destroy Nazi Germany, what the hell are you talking about. Maybe you wanted to say should've moved on to destroy the Soviet Union?
you just broke all the rules of hackernews yet no mod here to flag/shadowban/warn you, how fair. you also discarded the entire human race based on your distorted ideas on good/bad yet here you are visible to all eyes.
is it though? if you got the biggest gun why not rob someone else? do you believe ethics/empathy/humanity plays any role in any form governance? since we know that if you can sell the idea, you can get away with anything. why not just do the thing you know best? this is not singling out USA or China in any sense, they are just ahead of the curve, flower of the century.
a system optimized for only profit with almost no accountability (externalities) reads like a recipe to transfer of the wealth from many to few. if you add war into equation many becomes many-brown, many-yellow, many-black, many-jewish, many-others basicaly many-we-can-target-and-get-away-with. if you remove borders from the equation you end up seeing yourself on the receiving end as well. yet no-surprisingly few remains always the same.
so, the question is 'it pays back better to whom?'.
Democracy is worth defending even at the risk to the human race. We as a race are not worth our own existence if we do not understand that.
It was encouraging enough for Putin to try the same thing in the Baltic states, thankfully, NATO reacted ahead of time.
"The problem with invading Tawian "
They're not going to invade with amphibious ships.
They're going to invade by stripping the country of it's economic viability, by fomenting agitators, corrupting politicians, stuffing ballots. And then support the coup at the right time.