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Re:Intel and the $1.5trn chip industry meltdown by iepathos on Tuesday October 18, 2022 @05:43PM (#33254448)
The western world would not be compelled to engage militarily over Taiwan. We'd only need to provide money and weapons to Taiwan (rank #21 military in the world) to hold off China (#3) indefinitely given the fact that Taiwan is incredibly difficult to invade due to the barrier the mountain ridges form around it and the narrow straight leading to it for a sea attack. It's a natural fortress. Look at the ongoing failure of Russia (#2) in Ukraine (#22) despite not having difficult land to traverse in their invasion and having a greater advantage in military power by comparison.
Re:Intel and the $1.5trn chip industry meltdown by xyzzyz on Tuesday October 18, 2022 @05:49PM (#33254510)
How do you provide weapons to Taiwan if Chinese Navy blockades Taiwan?
Re:Intel and the $1.5trn chip industry meltdown by tuatoru on Tuesday October 18, 2022 @06:37PM (#33255024)
Ahead of time.
Re:Intel and the $1.5trn chip industry meltdown by SkyMarshal on Tuesday October 18, 2022 @07:30PM (#33255504)
They'll run out of something necessary eventually - food, fossil fuels, ammo, etc - forcing the US and allies to decide whether to intervene or not.
Re:Intel and the $1.5trn chip industry meltdown by tuatoru on Tuesday October 18, 2022 @10:46PM (#33256909)
I hope the US is ready to go with orbital kinetic energy weapons. Ten thousand or so projectiles, each made of 50 kilograms of tungsten, raining down at multiple kilometers per second, would likely...suppress...any attempted blockade.

"Star wars" is feasible with reusable launch to orbit vehicles.

Re:Intel and the $1.5trn chip industry meltdown by xyzzyz on Tuesday October 18, 2022 @07:36PM (#33255553)
Just like we did with Ukraine?
Re:Intel and the $1.5trn chip industry meltdown by tuatoru on Tuesday October 18, 2022 @10:37PM (#33256841)
Ukraine wasn't blockaded.

Taiwan does have fairly good stocks of weapons and ammo. It's also great terrain for fighting a defensive guerilla war. It'd be China's roleplay of "Russia in Afghanistan".

Re:Intel and the $1.5trn chip industry meltdown by xyzzyz on Tuesday October 18, 2022 @11:03PM (#33257043)
You’re missing the point, which is that we very much did not arm Ukraine ahead of time, just like we are not arming Taiwan right now in required volumes. China could literally blockade Taiwan tomorrow, and our arms are simply not there. What you propose depends very much on getting enough intelligence to ship all the arms they need before the blockade actually starts, and China not blockading Taiwan as soon as it learns about shipments leaving our ports.
Re:Intel and the $1.5trn chip industry meltdown by skhr0680 on Tuesday October 18, 2022 @07:52PM (#33255667)
Blockading Taiwan would require cooperation from Japan, and that's not going to happen
Re:Intel and the $1.5trn chip industry meltdown by rnk on Tuesday October 18, 2022 @11:18PM (#33257173)
And also the US. China would have to immediately use the "do what we say or we'll nuke you" to keep the world out of helping Taiwan.
Re:Intel and the $1.5trn chip industry meltdown by xyzzyz on Wednesday October 19, 2022 @12:18AM (#33257600)
Why nuke? Why assume that China cannot achieve military success using conventional means?

Observe that "the world" will not be helping Taiwan. India won't. Russia won't. Brazil won't. Nigeria won't. Pakistan won't. Bangladesh won't. Nigeria won't. You get the drill. US will, and probably Europe too, but why assume that these will 1) be able to defeat China in a conventional war in its own back yard, and 2) will even try to do so?

Re:Intel and the $1.5trn chip industry meltdown by rnk on Wednesday October 19, 2022 @01:22AM (#33258072)
Good point, it would not be the world. In short, the free countries of the world will come together to protect a democracy from tyranny. Yes, this is imperfect, lots of small countries were not protected, we protect the "good ones" which is unfairly decided.

The democratic countries will come together, the same ones that helped Ukraine; delete from that list authoritarian (democratic or not) countries, and democracies that are led by authoritarian dictator wanna-bes (so if Trump comes back he'd be conflicted, because he loves authoritarian power, but indicated his displeasure with China). Probably not Hungry. Russia doesn't matter if they aren't nuking you. India, there is the authoritarian bent the country it is on - non Hindu people aren't feeling so happy about their country. I'd think India will feel torn because they want to fight Pakistan freely but don't want to increase the power of China. Brazil is another partially fallen democratic country, wonder how that vote will turn out at the end of Oct.

There are two reasons those countries will help Taiwan - because they don't want authoritarian dictators to take over democracies, and because Ukraine reminded us all of the importance of stopping dictators - we can't wait for them to decide they have enough. It's over 80 years since the last time the world went through it, German and Japan were the original threats (with Italy and a few others), now it's China and Russia. The chip making part of Taiwan will all be decimated in the first few hours of a war (you thought that would be one of my reasons to intervene ;-)). It will be re-created bit after bombing it and damage and just losing power it will be hugely weakened, hurting both sides.

Ukraine showed how much more powerful the militaries of the western alliances are. I'm sure China will not be so weak and kleptocratically weakened as Russia was, but they haven't been in battles recently so they will need some ramping up to really organize. I'm sure China will be able to do major damage to navys trying to operate around Taiwan, sink a few us carriers. But the US and the other western countries are about a lot more and they can operate in countries around there.

China is a powerful country, they have brilliant engineers and scientists and that economy and a vast population. They are not to be under-estimated. The world must move forward to promote democracy and stop dictators.

Re:Intel and the $1.5trn chip industry meltdown by xyzzyz on Wednesday October 19, 2022 @10:40AM (#33262920)
So you agree that China at least has a good chance of winning this war conventionally, and will not have to “immediately use the "do what we say or we'll nuke you"” nuclear threat? That’s my point here, I am not really interested in discussing moralistic platitudes as to how “free” and “democratic” just happen to exactly coincide with the countries of the western alliance.
Re:Intel and the $1.5trn chip industry meltdown by rnk on Wednesday October 19, 2022 @07:34PM (#33269142)
Sure, there's always a chance, and China's chance is better than Russia's. There's a chance the other great power authoritarian country with a lack of freedom, Russia, could beat Ukraine, even without using nukes.

When people don't like to discuss what they call platitudes is because they will not benefit. The US has endless problems, with 200 years or racism, slavery, denial of institutional racism, then our destruction and the big lie about Iraq, and finally Afghanistan had a different situation but still managed to screw that up. My friend who recently moved back to Taiwan to retire will probably also have an interesting viewpoint on such things. "Please don't kill me, China" might describe his views. He thinks (hopes?) there won't be a war because the west will help protect Taiwan.

Re:Intel and the $1.5trn chip industry meltdown by dirtyid on Tuesday October 18, 2022 @11:30PM (#33257256)
Why? PRC will be operating in TW EEZ which it considers Chinese waters anyway. What is Japan going to do except watch helplessly from Yonaguni.

Practically, PRC can simply mine TW ports, crater run ways, via glide mines and MLRS all within PRC borders (that can hit anywhere in TW + adjacent). US + co doesn't remotely have the demining, sealift or airlift capacity to logistically support TW off PRC waters. Nor will they convince any commercial fleet/insurers to go on suicide mission of... invading One China territory. It's like how Operation Starvation crippled JP during WW2. Except TW is much smaller than JP and PRC is a much larger industrial power than US during wartime. PRC can unilaterally and trivially render TW inaccessible - it can blockade TW with basically zero sustained naval or air effort.

And really if US/JP try to run the blockade they're legally invading Chinese sovereign territory and it's WW3 anyway. TW may have chance to survive a PLA invasion, but IMO no chance of breaking a PRC blockade. Folks are grossly underestimating the proponderous of advantages PRC has near her coast.

Re:Intel and the $1.5trn chip industry meltdown by AtlasBarfed on Tuesday October 18, 2022 @10:43PM (#33256893)
The Chinese navy can't blockade an air force, and we would sell Taiwan an air force.

Taiwan between missiles and air force elements would be uninvadable. The only way to control Taiwan is to land a quarter million soldiers or more.

Re:Intel and the $1.5trn chip industry meltdown by namaria on Tuesday October 18, 2022 @06:46PM (#33255088)
Whoever ends up controlling Taiwan will have a lot of destroyed factories on their hands. Losing 90% of advanced integrated processor output is world changing by itself. Besides the fact that military analysis done by us news spectators is a vain exercise.