Yes, that is intentional. There's more to the CPU market than the next gaming platform.

Yeah, and the Biden admin hasn’t done anything at all that might provoke a nuclear exchange…

I’m always amused that some people never grow out of the “our team is infallible” mentality.

It is a bit off-topic, but the Biden admin hasn't done anything like that indeed. In fact, nuclear exchange is self-destruction. No one is stupid enough to do that, even Trump wouldn't be. So parent's remark is off.

For chips to be blocked going to Germany doesn't thus require a nuclear exchange. You rather should think of smth like military aggression from China towards Taiwan.

Shooting down the Chinese ballon and arming Ukraine with long range weapons aren't potentially acts of provocation against nuclear powers?

Reverse the roles. American ballon. Mexico getting armed against the US by a foreign superpower and sworn enemy. Would the US tolerate those acts?

> Would the US tolerate those acts?

Yes? What about their nuclear policy from the past half-century convinces you otherwise?

In the last 50 years US never had anything on their border.

Even if they did, it wouldn't change much.

1. Nobody would launch nukes domestically, so moot point.

2. Using nukes internationally would be a faux-pas beyond fixing. Every modern, nuclear-equipped nation understands this.

3. The United States doesn't need nuclear weaponry to dispel invaders, or even to retaliate against foreign attacks. Their nuclear weapons exist to deter other nuclear superpowers from using their weapons for petty gain.

Absolutely agreed. The US military is so well funded and capable that they could finish the job without needed to resort to nukes.

Not sure if you’re being sarcastic or serious.

America totally crushed Grenada!

Doesn’t the US make regular use of depleted uranium munitions? Particularly in the middle east?

Definitely seems nuclear.

Depleted uranium is not a nuclear weapon.

Tell that to the non-combat victims: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7903104/#:~:tex....

You can tell them whatever you want. It won't change the wording of the Geneva convention though.

You're free to argue that DU rounds are effectively a poisonous weapon and should be banned on those grounds. I would agree. That doesn't change the fact that depleted uranium is not a nuclear weapon.

People forget that JFK nearly nuked the USSR over the Cuban missile crisis (which was a response to NATO missiles in Turkey, ironically enough).

The missiles at question in the Cuban missile crisis were nuclear. That's not a reasonable comparison to the non-nuclear confrontation in Ukraine.

> Reverse the roles. American ballon

Ok. American balloon over China will be shot down. You know the rules about air space, water etc?

Sincere advice: don't assume you have insights and knowledge that is deeper than those from the experts. This is a pitfall for us HN'ers.

Man, I wrote several replies to this comment but decided against them all. This is silly- the U.S. and China have been playing with balloons like this for years, that one was just really big

Right, the US would totally make nuclear threats against Mexico for shooting down a ballon. Not even Trump would be deranged enough for that (well on second thought, maybe he would but nobody would take him serious, just like Medvedev's daily nuclear threat).

The Mexico example was long range weapons. If Chinese missiles were hitting American cities from Mexico (outside of the localized fighting), do you believe that has the possibility to escalate?

Maybe, but I can give a much more concrete example: Russia has nukes on Europe's doorstep in Kaliningrad which can reach Berlin in a couple of minutes, do you hear anybody in Germany, Europe or NATO whine about "escalation"?

Can you break this down? I don't follow.

TL;DR: Russia has Iskander missiles stationed in their Kaliningrad exclave (former Koenigsberg if Kaliningrad doesn't ring a bell), Iskander missiles can carry nuclear warheads and have a range of 500 km which is just enough to reach Berlin. Now add two and two together. Why would Russia station nuclear capable missiles in the middle of Europe without the nuclear warheads nearby?

I'm very aware of Kaliningrad and it's history.

I don't understand your point. How does it relate to my analogy of a neighbor of America getting armed and trained by a sworn and bellicose enemy of America who states openly that it's goal is American regime change and geopolitical breakup. Under this scenario, I suspect the US would roll into Mexico and end that sooner than later under the Monroe Doctrine due to the real (or perceived) existential threat. At least, I would hope so - Mexico being in a military alliance with China would be not good.

Russia's stated goal (according to Dmitri Medvedev, former president and now "Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation") is also to "build a united Eurasia from Vladivostok to Lisbon", yet it is very unlikely that any European nation would preemptively invade Kaliningrad over those existential threats.

Also, Mexico entering a military alliance with China is extremely far fetched, how did you even arrive at that idea?

Might want to take a peek at a map of Eastern Europe.

Thanks for your suggestion. There are a lot of things I don't know, but this subject is somewhat the exception to that. The US has made no nuclear threats, on the contrary, it has done everything to remind the Kremlin, which was and is threatening all kinds of countries with nuclear blackmail, that doing so is off limits.

I will assume you were unknowingly repeating Kremlin propaganda. Please don't.

Such as?

Imagine if during the Iraq War, Russia suddenly decided - you know, I want a piece of this. They made some platitudes about really feeling for the people of Iraq, and then started sending massive amounts of supplies, including long ranged weapons, tanks, depleted uranium munitions, countless rounds of cluster bombs (!), and even jets (soon enough) to the Iraqis. Not only were these weapons effective enough to manage to kill tens of thousands of Americans, but some were even being used to carry out largely random attacks in major American cities. At the same time the Iraqis decided to start doing things like assassinating high profile American figures, like journalists or speakers, who argued in favor of the war.

What do you think's going to happen? That we're going to say "Guys, that's not cool. Ok I guess we'll just withdraw from Iraq, after all our reasons for invading were complete rubbish anyhow. Darn, you win this one - Russia!"? Come on. It would have just led to an endless escalation, well not 'endless' because there is one final escalation from which there is no coming back. That people lack the empathy to see how dangerous the path we're treading is only because the media has spent years creating this absurd dichotomy in the world where America - good, the ever-shifting enemy of the day - bad. So naturally doing anything to your enemy is okay, because they're bad, and we're good.

Ah the good old whataboutism.

Here's some counter-whataboutism: what about the Korean and Vietnam wars (the Soviet Union even sent their own pilots with the jets), and countless other smaller conflicts in Africa? The Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc were pumping weapons into those conflicts or have been invading themselves to support "their side". Same with Russia in Syria btw.

At least the free west is upfront and open about the weapon deliveries down to the last helmet:

https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/schwerpunkte/krieg-in...

The main reason that propaganda and dehumanization are such a typical part of war, is that it helps prevent people from considering the weight of their own actions, let alone the perspective of the enemy. What I described is not a whataboutism, it's a hypothetical illustrating exactly what's happening today, except flipping the roles of the participants. Yet of course it feels alien enough that you instinctively want to fight against it - I must be tricking you or engaging in some sort of deceptive rhetorical device. I am not.

All I see is you parroting Russian propaganda, sorry. The whataboutism comes in when you pick the US-led invasion of Iraq over non-existing WMDs, which of course was also unjustified. But one invasion being unjustified doesn't suddenly justify another (it only does in Soviet and Russian propaganda logic) - also note that the western countries were extremely divided over the Iraq invasion (e.g. France, Germany, Canada and the Scandinavian countries couldn't be arsed to join), while there's pretty much universal agreement in the so-called 'collective West' that supporting Ukraine with weapons and training to defend themselves is the morally right thing to do.

Careful, many people on HN (as smart as they are) have little tolerance for nuance and empathy.

And they like to respond with “whataboutism!” - which is ironically, a Soviet propaganda term.

Americans are particularly myopic and view the world though a post-history lens.

Whataboutism is an old Soviet propaganda technique, but AFAIK they didn't come up with the term (they must have had an internal name for it of course, but somehow I doubt they called it whataboutism)

> They made some platitudes about really feeling for the people of Iraq, and then started sending massive amounts of supplies, including long ranged weapons, tanks, depleted uranium munitions, countless rounds of cluster bombs (!).

Not sure what the (!) for the cluster bombs is about, both Ukraine and Russia never signed the cluster bomb ban, and both Ukraine and Russia have been using cluster bombs in both this conflict but also since 2014.

This isn't anything new, the only change is that they are now being provided by America, and the American ones appear to fail less.

> Not only were these weapons effective enough to manage to kill tens of thousands of Americans, but some were even being used to carry out irregular attacks in major American cities.

I'm not sure that the provided weapons are being used to carry out any 'irregular' attacks on Russian cities?.

But even if they were, did the Russians really think they could enter this war and bomb cities into dust and never get bombed themselves?.

> That people lack the empathy to see how dangerous the path we're treading is only because the media has spent years creating this absurd dichotomy in the world where the American cause of the week is just and right, whereas the enemy - pure evil. And so in this context people seem to rarely ask themselves whether what we're doing is right or wrong, because how can doing harm to pure evil ever be wrong?

I think its perfectly morally acceptable to arm a country trying to defend itself against an imperialist invader.

I don't think the path that is being tread is in any way shape or form dangerous, why would Russia losing this war be any different to the other wars that both Russia and the Soviet Union lost?.

And where did I write anything about Biden?

> Trump fumbles the great power competition

Your bias is clear here. I was trying to balance it.

Older generation fabs are critical. They power most of the machines around us, and often pump out low priced but capable chips. I certainly am not contesting that.

I responded to someone who seems to believe this is the great AI equalizer. This fab has no relevance to AI. And FWIW, Europe already has a number of much more advanced fabs! Intel is currently upgrading Ireland to "Intel 4" spec (which in TSMC land would be 7nm), and is building other fabs, for instance.

Ultimately this story is "German automakers want more control over supply chain of vanilla automation chips", and not much more.

As an aside, it's always interesting that we talk about Taiwan's revered chip prowess (South Korea is up there as well)...when the Dutch company ASML is really the technology key. TSMC executes extraordinarily well, but they wouldn't be doing it without ASML.

I am no expert, but my understanding is that to get nice chips, you need both ASML and TSMC. They have very different areas of expertise and posses very different know hows.

Well, ASML wouldn’t be doing it without the micro optics they buy from Zeiss in Germany either, it doesn’t stop there

Lets just say semiconductor manufacturing is the best example of regional competencies and global trade.

Globalization has failed on many fronts and resulted in race to the bottom outcomes, but here it works well due to specialization.

Having understood that, one can also see a core TSMC strength is that Taiwanese workers are disciplined and work long hours for moderate pay, a culture that European and American labor will never accept. So all these new factories in US/EU should be treated as high cost alternatives, justifiable only for non cost-sensitive customers like defence/aerospace/high end cars.

And/or Taiwanese workers should negotiate higher pay and shorter hours

The way I see it, things like that are critical for long term capability maintenance; having or not having fabs for mass production of simpler chips is what determines whether your country will have a workforce which would make it possible to build and run a cutting edge fab later; if you keep offshoring the cheap and simple stuff, eventually the state of art stuff goes there as well.