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this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2023
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If they invade, won't all the chip fabrication places just blow all their shit up and wipe systems? Pretty sure TSMC said that was the plan.
Doesn't seem like they'll be able to capture a whole lot aside from land and that will come at a pretty steep cost I'd imagine.
I heard about that too. The technology produced there is too valuable to be left to invaders.
The chip thing is definitely an issue. However, even if they didn't get any chip tech or factories, they still get the island. Militarily speaking, the situation is similar to Cuba and US during the Cold War. Taking control of the island will grant them more military security. Additionally, it will grant them control over the shipping lanes in the surroundings waters, which are heavily used for international trade.
The US needs it for trade/their economy. China needs it to protect itself and gain more economic power. For these reasons, it makes sense for both China and the US to be heavily interested in controlling Taiwan. Personally, I really don't see a likely solution to avoiding military conflict unless the powers of the two sides figure out how to resolve their antagonism, which I think is unlikely without a change in Chinese leadership.
I don't really know if that makes a whole bunch of sense..... The only country with the capabilities of attacking China is the US. The only real provocation that may spark that military conflict is an attack on Taiwan or South Korea.
Taiwan isn't even that advantageous of a location for an invasion either way, the strait of Formosa would be a death trap for any amphibious landing. The most militarily important region for China is and always has been the Korean peninsula.
I think Chinas main motivation is that Taiwan disrupts their plans to completely control trade routes in the South China sea. Once the 9 dash line is under control and expanded to include the territorial waters of Taiwan, China will have a defacto monopoly on trade for most of eastern Asia.
The land is most of what they want. Taiwan is militarily strategic land, it essentially blocks all access to the Pacific.
Thing is, that would only bring them to parity for the current gen, which they would instantly fall behind on having to start everything up again and train or force people into running the modern nodes.
These fabs (and pretty much ALL fabs) depend on tech to run their processes and make their chips, which isn't made in Taiwan.
If they do it for the silicon, they'll also need to take a good chunk of West Europe.
Would it set the West back a bit? Yes, but not all that much. There are non Eastern fabs up to date and the people in Taiwan trained to operate bulk fabs are probably on a shortlist for extraction targets too.
Even just destroying the competition makes their stuff much more valuable.
TSMC just finished building a factory in the US mainland.
They moved TSMC production facilities to Phoenix, Arizona. It's slated to open in 2025.
They didn't move them, they're just building new fabrication plants here so we don't have to depend on threatened foreign land for the production. https://pr.tsmc.com/english/news/2977
Also SMIC (China's chip manufacturer) is now also producing 7nm chips, even though they were sanctioned in 2020. That means they either had a breakthrough in the process or they obtained and were able to repair and operate/reverse engineer the incredibly complex TSMC fabs.
7nm doesn't need EUV, as things get smaller it doesn't suddenly become impossible to do things with traditional lithography it just becomes harder and at some point incredibly uneconomical. They certainly ripped off the node from TSMC in some way (whether spionage or reverse-engineering), that is, the shape of the transistors and stuff but that doesn't mean that they're producing them in the same way.
Thank God they're finally building some chip plants here. The fact that our whole economy depends on some foreign island next to a huge country that has always hustorically threatened to take it back is insane to me. Although I think we should have more manufacturing in the homeland in general. Thanks capitalism, for off shoring manufacturing for the last many decades -_-
TSMC is just the end of a long supply chain of one-of-a-kind suppliers, all conveniently aligned with the West. TSMC does not make the lithography machines, the Dutch ASML is the only company that does (though they have some plants in the US now I think). Even so, ASML would be dead in the water without Swiss Zeiss optics.
The US' strength was never autarky, but global trade. The reason the US economy is so resilient is because most US dollars are not in the US, but in reserves across the world. That means even the US currency is intertwined with global trade. If the US attempted autarky, it would collapse both the US and the world economy. That's why Trump's policies were beyond stupid by the way.
Zeiss is German. The Semiconductor supply plant is in Oberkochen.
It’s a pretty interesting story where Taiwan decided to invest enormously into chip production so they could use the economic benefits to shield themselves from China. Worked pretty well eh
It was a gamble to focus on fabrication only and not include design. It payed off but it was a gamble.
Except they have problems finding workers. 3rd world Americans aren't cut out for the jobs it seems like.
I think it's mostly because it's in Arizona... Not exactly the tech capital of the U.S..
They wanted somewhere where land and labor was cheap and neglected to consider educated engineers and water are vital for a semiconductor fab to operate.
It was a fucking stupid decision, and TSMC has been flying in Taiwanese engineers and workers in general to make up for the short comings.
[Curb Your Enthusiasm closing credits song plays]
More info on TSMC from an AI chip manufacturing perspective: https://youtu.be/AJGrdtKT3LM?si=M-3EWWOPcIXX8vgv
That's a good threat if plausible.
That's probably not a good plan, however. What you gonna do after the blowing up the plant? Emigrate, maybe, but for those who'll stay: Congratulations, you have just blown up your job, your life and any bargaining chip you ever had.