What? Is the USA going to sell their chips to China? Because when Taiwan gets invaded the Fabs will be destroyed and/or made inoperable with no way to get them functional again.

China is already working on their own chips. It’s only a matter of time before it’s good enough.

They are lightyears behind. 20 years if not more. These chip machines is work of many decates of iterative work. You cannot simply step in and produce similar tech.

You don’t need to actually replace them with equal alternatives, just enough so the digital economy doesn’t implode. Even 2015 is probably a target year in terms of performance that doesn’t destroy the entire electronics industry.

If they are "lightyears behind", and everyone on HN thinks that China will invade Taiwan in order to get chips, then why the ** is the US trying to cripple China's domestic semiconductor industry?!? Isn't this a self-fulfulling prophecy? If HNers are so concerned about Taiwan's peace and independence then why aren't HNers protesting more against the US' effort to cripple China's semiconductor industry so that China has no incentive to invade Taiwan for chips?

These questions are only half rhetorical. I really want to hear what people have to say about this.

> and everyone on HN thinks that China will invade Taiwan in order to get chips

Most everyone things China will invade Taiwan because they want to own the land. It was once part of "china" but now is a (politically unrecognized) separate nation.

Everyone thinks that the only reason not to invade is that warfare will surely destroy all semiconductor manufacturing on the island.

The US wants to cripple the Chinese semiconductor industry to ensure that Taiwan can't be invaded without severely hurting the Chinese economy.

You underestimate the insane R&D investment china can put on its chip industry to get ahead quicker

I may be naive, but I think R&D in those cutting-edge sectors is not something you can just throw money at and then get results, you need to create the foundation for it first. Is there evidence that links more open societies and liberal economies to technological progress?

If money was the driver the US would be first, not Taiwan.

TSMC isn’t the only thing they need to replace. ASML isn’t either. There’s multiple levels of sole suppliers for chipmaking that nobody can replace. China can’t replicate an mRNA vaccine either.

They already have mRNA vaccine in trial? Check AWCorna.

Okay so what's the plan after 20 years? Or do you think China won't be a problem for you anymore by then?

Sure, we are talking probably 20-30 years.

Good enough for what? The free world isn't standing still so China will always be several generations behind. The market wants the latest and greatest.

It's only if the free world can't compete will China catch up, in which case it will get what it deserves.

Good enough for 70% of dometic market demand, which analists have found is satisified by 14nm.

The thing is, "latest and greatest" is actually a niche demand, even if we don't feel like that's the case because of phones and laptops. The market for non-phone, non-laptop, boring unsexy applications that don't require more than 14nm is apparently much bigger.

lol your overstimate the Chinese tech by a generation at least.

> Because when Taiwan gets invaded the Fabs will be destroyed and/or made inoperable with no way to get them functional again.

You can't know that. Taiwan might plan to do this, which China surely anticipates, thus in any invasion plans would be made to stop it - paratroopers dropping on top to seize control quickly during the night, covert operatives swooping in to take out critical personnel in charge of sabotage, etc. etc.

> Is the USA going to sell their chips to China?

China is already working on improving their own industry and reducing reliance on imports.

China is decades behind and will stay so because the industry is not standing still either.

The chip machines need maintenance which the Chinese cannot do themselves. They don't have the knowledge. They'd need ASML (European company) for that.

> Because when Taiwan gets invaded the Fabs will be destroyed and/or made inoperable with no way to get them functional again.

And as long as this fucks us, we will be extremely protective of Taiwan.

Once USA is silicon-independent, we'll have one less reason to threaten China with war, and China will have one less reason not to invade.

who says there is only one way to invade Taiwan? a maritime blockade would be super effective to suffocate Taiwan in a matter of months and destroy their economy.

> a maritime blockade would be super effective to

to create a total war involving the countries dependent on products from Taiwan.

The US does not the balls anymore to do anything against China, unfortunately. (Nor the financial interests to do so, with most of the US debt being owned by China)

Unfortunately I think you're correct. I see this as a move for the US to pull back as they did with Europe (see economist frontpage this week[^1]).

[^1]: https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/11/24/europe-faces-an...

They're also building a fab in Japan and that one seems to be progressing much faster.

About the Invasion of Taiwan, I kinda doubt it. They just had local elections and the president Tsai said it would be a referendum on her stance against China[1]. IF that is really the case then it seems like the Taiwanese people have voted against being turned into another Ukraine.[2]

I am not currently in Taiwan, but a couple of weeks ago I could see 3 military cargo planes land in Taipei every day. I'd be curious how it looks today.

One thing to remember is that 17(or more?) billion of those arms that are destined to Ukraine were originally intended for Taiwan[3]. With all those (western) reports of the US running out of ammunition because Ukraine uses in 3 days what the US produces in 1 month[4], and given how isolated Taiwan is on a map I wonder how wise the whole endeavour really was.

I get that there are a lot of Tech people in the valley from Taiwan that have a more hawkish view on the relationship between Taiwan and China, but can we acknowledge for a moment that a) the valley is not representative for the world or any countries population and b) we also have to be a bit realistic about the facts on the ground.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/taiwan-president-...

[2] https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/The-Nikkei-View/Taiwan-s-rul...

[3] https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-effort-to-arm-taiwan-faces-...

[4] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/11/27/world/u-s-europ...

The US has less "skin in the game" now that the TSMC core tech can be found on US soil - that's what the parent and me are referring to. Taiwan is not able to defend itself without US aid.

ps. I'm not in the valley and it's not about "hawkish" views, it is pure power-play.

Oh absolutely, I can't say I disagree with you. But I'm just saying that it also means that if the US drops Taiwan they do have a lot of politicians that are sympathetic to mainland China. So it doesn't necessarily have to be an invasion at that point.

How much tech is there that wasn't there before that isn't ASML, NXP, etc. tech?

> Taiwan is not able to defend itself without US aid.

If you look at a topographic map of Taiwan, it's not so obvious. Rough terrain coupled with the fact that an amphibious assault is needed to even get to Taiwan, and then the troops there need to be resupplied by sea and air (both of which require infrastructure which can be sabotaged), make Taiwan a very good defensive position. Of course it couldn't last forever without external help, but even on it's own it's plenty to cause a massive embarrassing bloodbath.

Taiwan is a small island, it lacks lot of basic natural resources, like oil, iron ore, etc. One simple thing that China could do is to send their navy to cut off all the supply lines: it won't take long before Taiwan is degraded to third world country. Without the US navy to counter Chinese they do not stand a chance.

You're talking about it being hard to resupply Chinese troops over the air, how about resupplying the whole Taiwanese population?

>If you look at a topographic map of Taiwan, it's not so obvious

Assessments of TW's defensibility gets dimmer and dimmer with increasingly modern PLA capabilities. If you actually look at topo map of Taiwan:

https://i.imgur.com/Ds6hz2e.png

Island a series of plains with no depth fragmented by rivers from rain + high mountains. Essentially a series of sequential turkey shooting galleries from air. PRC will be the ones blowing up bridges and infra to cut island into piece meal bastions to further restrict operation space of TW. The mountains themselves are incredibly tall, which is a nightmare for defenders limited to light arms against attackers who'll be droning them with relative impunity. The foliage helps, but SAR / sensors tech filling that gap fast. Before/if PLA even bother with landing, they're going to shape conditions to be as uncontested as possible. Which likely means embarassing one sided bloodbath as PLA drone operators in air conditioned mainland offices glassing 100,000s of relatively soft ROCA defenders in plains with no rear except rough mountains rougher than what Vietcon / Taliban operated from. Meanwhile, rest of island - the home front - will have critical infra distrupted, after calories and clean water runs out, they'll be inviting PLA to resupply island vias sea and air. Capabilities of attacker determine whether geography is blessing or curse to defenders. For TW, it's increasingly curse.

I wonder how people would vote, if forced to choose between acting like Ukrainians or being treated like Uighurs.

Be a slave or fight for freedom?

That would certainly be a difficult vote, but I think the second alternative would be more like being treated like Hong Kong. Certainly not nice and probably a bit worse than Hong Kong, but a very long shot from the Uighur situation.

> b) we also have to be a bit realistic about the facts on the ground.

Realistic facts on the ground for you:

The prime majority of rural Taiwanese who don't speak English are even bigger sinophobes, and have even less relation with the mainland.

Most Sinophilic area in TW is Taipei, where the highest concentration of migrants from China live, and from where the lion share of immigrants to US comes from.

What "facts on the ground" you expected to see?

And the mainland is full of Russians pretending to be Chinese like you used to say? You yourself have a massive personal chip on your shoulder against both Taiwan and the mainland. Your anecdote means very little.

> With all those (western) reports of the US running out of ammunition because Ukraine uses in 3 days what the US produces in 1 month[4], and given how isolated Taiwan is on a map I wonder how wise the whole endeavour really was.

Maybe that’s one of the reasons why china was so supportive of the invasion. It’s a test of Americas ability to supply a war (in proxy).

  > a test of Americas ability to supply a war (in proxy)

The Chinese know this well.

  The line between disorder and order lies in logistics
    - Sun Tzu

Taiwanese wages are still much less than US wages, so it won’t be simple.

Keep in mind that much of the West is in a recession that looks quite bad. People will be careful about losing their job maybe even accepting much lower wages as a result.

> Keep in mind that much of the West is in a recession that looks quite bad.

Quite bad based on what? Looks like a completely unsubstantiated claim.

I hope the Chinese people have some success in overthrowing the CCP first. It’s unlikely, but still.

If you would have said " Invasion of Taiwan likely" that might have been productive. But this is not reddit, just making up "confirmed" is neither mature nor appropriate for a technical audience.

I think Ukraine has put paid to that.