[HN Gopher] Why a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be a catastro...
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Why a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be a catastrophe for China
and the world
Author : jseliger
Score : 31 points
Date : 2021-07-05 17:07 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (doxa.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (doxa.substack.com)
| wodenokoto wrote:
| Given how smoothly chinas invasion of Hong Kong went, I wondered
| how far back one had to go to find similar articles about how
| China couldn't invade Hong Kong. But searching for the headline
| with Hong Kong instead of Taiwan only returns results regarding
| China and Taiwan.
| bloniac wrote:
| The world would have much bigger problems than semiconductors if
| a full blown war happened in Taiwan.
|
| It won't happen anyway. China is just Sabre rattling and beating
| its chest for political gain.
|
| If they were going to do it then it should have been on Trumps
| watch, when there was no certainty at all the USA would back its
| allies in a conflict. Not that there's much certainty now.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Thus the semiconductor market in 2021 is a fully baked cake.
| You can't just swap some ingredients out in response to a one-off
| military invasion, and then keep trucking along. No, we'll have
| to bake a whole new cake if TSMC goes bye-bye. And that will be
| painful for everyone, everywhere._
|
| Well, tell that to the economists that praised "competitive
| advantage" out-sourcing of everything:
|
| "Smith outlines the basic theory behind comparative advantage;
| that it makes more sense to manufacture a good which you have the
| necessary expertise and materials to produce than to
| inefficiently allocate your resources to the production of a good
| that some other country can produce for less overall cost."
|
| Yeah, until that other country becomes an enemy, or a monopoly,
| or has you by the balls - or another country snaps it or cozies
| up with it...
|
| But, yeah, who would have though that would ever happen in the
| "end of history" era.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| This is all hypothesis. Everyone can draw any scenario
| imaginable.
|
| Here the author claims that TSMC and Taiwanese fabs will become
| "unavailable" in case of an invasion by the mainland. He also
| makes the claim that Taiwanese would 'disable' those fabs
| themselves in order "to protect customer IP".
|
| The former is of course a possibility, the latter is rather more
| strange. Neither are explained.
|
| It seems to me that the mainland would have an interest in
| protecting those fabs and in resuming "business as usual" as soon
| as possible, so I would imagine them drawing plans to make that
| happen in case of a military invasion. Fabs may also be very
| useful in order to keep any sanctions towards China at a minimum:
| Would the US want to push for, say, a trade embargo if that meant
| cutting off semi supply? Maybe but that would make these
| sanctions very painful for the West and their allies.
|
| On the Taiwanese side, there might be a temptation to sabotage
| the fabs but IMHO that would be a shot in the foot: If the fabs
| are gone and the mainland does take control of the island then
| they would never allow such concentration in Taiwan to happen
| again so Taiwan would fade forever. And if the invasion fails
| then there would probably be a massive push to rebuild outside of
| Taiwan. All in all the destruction of the fabs would probably be
| used as a bluff/threat to push the US to protect Taiwan as much
| as possible (although the US would likely never directly attack
| Chinese forces, and reciprocally).
| akomtu wrote:
| The Taiwan saga will be another example of the 5 stages of
| acceptance. Right now the western world seems to be in denial.
| Once China does a small incursion into Taiwan, we'll advance to
| the next stage - anger. Inability to stop China will take us to
| bargaining. When China ignores the west, we'll get into the
| depression stage. When CCP's troops start patrolling Taiwan
| streets, and I think it'll happen in just ten years, we'll reach
| acceptance. By that time, the US will better have fully
| functional foundries in Arizona.
| api wrote:
| I heard it put this way once: the US can't stop a Chinese
| invasion of Taiwan any more than China could stop a
| hypothetical US invasion of Cuba.
|
| In both cases it's a battle right off the coast of a superpower
| with pretty massive home court advantage to the closer nation.
| Right off shore means no supply lines and the ability to just
| fire shit from shore at enemy ships and planes. The entire
| industrial output of the closer nation is right there.
|
| Note that I am leaving thermonuclear escalation off the table.
| Nobody really wins that one. I'm imagining a scoped
| conventional conflict in the form of an intervention.
| jollybean wrote:
| China could easily stop a US invasion of Cuba merely by
| putting several garrisons of soldiers in Cuba.
|
| They probably could not stop an 'all in invasion' - of course
| - but that's not the point. The point would be to raise the
| cost significantly i.e. 'invading Cuba would mean war with
| China'.
|
| There are a lot of things the US could to do raise the cost
| of the invasion of Taiwan, but it's hard. Every move comes
| with a counter move.
|
| The US would have to coordinate with everyone else on this.
| They're trying to do that but it's hard.
| Retric wrote:
| Given some warning the US could actually stop a Chinese
| invasion of Taiwan. The US Navy has the second most powerful
| air force in the world just behind the US Air Force. That's
| the rather insane scale we've invested into the current
| military.
|
| Cruse missiles are a different story, China could trivially
| destroy TSMC's factories. That said, the US is hardly the
| only nation likely to react to such an invasion.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| I think that the US would not want to directly attack
| China, and China would not want to directly attack the US.
| The US would provide weapons, intelligence, etc. but would
| not fire on the Chinese because that would be an unlimited
| and uncontrolled escalation, in effect a declaration of war
| on a country actually larger than them, a nuclear power
| which government could not afford to be seen as weak and
| defeated. That's partly why the US have always refrained
| from entering into any formal obligation to intervene
| militarily.
|
| Likewise, I don't think it would be in China's interest to
| destroy TSMC's fabs. Quite the opposite, I think they would
| probably want to keep them intact if they can help it and
| resume business as usual as soon as possible.
| publicola1990 wrote:
| US couldn't stop the Japanese from invading Philippines.
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| A lot has changed since then
| pcrh wrote:
| While semiconductors are a very important part of industry, it's
| naive to think that a loss of Taiwanese output would be as
| disastrous as this article suggests.
|
| Consider the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, they are much
| larger than any such loss would have, yet this pandemic didn't
| have any acute large-scale effect on geopolitics (though it will
| like have a longer-term, and some what unpredictable effect).
|
| A much larger long-term effect of China's ambitions towards
| Taiwan would likely be seen in China's growing economic might
| resulting in a shifting of alliances/allegiances of East Asian
| countries between the US and China.
| tester756 wrote:
| But why actually cutting-edge semiconductors are *this*
| important?
|
| Isn't endgame war tech solved problem for like N decades?
|
| What's the usecase? better AI? computer vision? research?
|
| aren't computational resources for those provided by super
| computers?
| bsd44 wrote:
| Perhaps when the US and its allies withdraw troops from the
| Middle East, they can move them to Taiwan to protect it from
| China.
| [deleted]
| mastry wrote:
| Near the end of the article, Steve Blanks is quoted...
|
| _Alternatively, Beijing may seek to negotiate with or coerce
| Taipei (or both) in order to allow China sole access to TSMC and
| block chip exports to the United States, thereby securing China's
| own supply while crippling American industry._
|
| But earlier in the article it's mentioned that the US effectively
| has a "kill switch" on TSMC (by cutting off key supplies needed
| to fabricate semiconductors). If this is true, then the scenario
| presented by Blanks seems unlikely -- or am I missing some
| detail?
| kposehn wrote:
| You aren't missing any detail from what I understand. A core
| focus of US national security this decade is securing chip
| fabrication capability that is not endangered by global supply
| chain disruptions - or making the cost of the disruption
| unreasonably high to the disruptor.
| taurath wrote:
| Mutually assured unproductivity seems like the setup for the
| next bond plot.
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(page generated 2021-07-05 23:02 UTC)