- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@sh.itjust.works
- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@sh.itjust.works
Thoughts?
Is this imperialism by China, a country which is supposed to be left-wing? Leftists are normally anti-imperialism. Wouldn’t it be better to let Taiwan democratically decide whether they want to be part of China or not?
Frankly, a part of me suspects that whole AI RAM and SSD hoarding rush into “data centers” that aren’t even plugged to a power plant is a manufactured market push to begin hoarding electronic components before China invades Taiwan. I suspect a lot of oligarchs would be less willing to feed the AI bubble if they didn’t have a post-Taiwan invasion world to compensate their investments if it doesn’t work out. You think there’s scarcity now, just wait until the invasion happens. China invading Taiwan is going to make China lose a lot of support, one has to wonder what they think they will get out of it.
Taiwan would not have such a big target on its back if it weren’t for TSMC. TSMC should have diversified throughout the world yesterday, but because of wealth and power, Taiwan has to pay the price. The politics and arguments are gaslighting; China isn’t interested in Taiwan, they are interested in controlling the market necessary for even basic modern warfare - advanced microchips. I don’t know if its due to the greed that they are blind to it or perhaps they are perfectly aware of it, but attacking Taiwan will be treated as an attack against the world by many countries. It will provoke a reaction several times worse than what Russia attacking Ukraine did. By driving down their viability as a trading partner, they will make a lot of countries consider other options that are way outside of the contemporary political landscape today.
TSMC was developed by a Taiwanese citizen to be a “silicon shield” - it’s too valuable for other countries to risk a war.
It’s why trump was trying to cajole TSMC to move 50% production to the US and they were like “nah”
It’s the other way round. Taiwan is needed for airfields and to deny deep sea submarine bases to China. The US let Taiwan have the monopoly on advanced semiconductors to have the world defend Taiwan against China.
china already has the capability to produce advanced microchips themselves (it was in the news literally 3 days ago, i’m too lazy to search it out rn) and they’ve been heavily investing in research into microchips the last year so it makes sense they made significant progress.
on the other hand, the us is already building chip capabilities in its own country to become independent from taiwan and so taiwan doesn’t have the significance internationally anymore that it used to have.
i’m even inclined to say that china waited deliberately for taiwan to lose its international status before attacking, so other countries wouldn’t rush to its aid so much.
They don’t, they are approaching it but don’t have the scale. The people smuggling NVIDIA chips instead of using Huawei for AI would be laughing at these claims.
The US is and would be if they were preparing to back out of a conflict between the US and Taiwan. It would take several decades for TSMC capability to be distributed across different countries, even the US isn’t going to reach it. I don’t know where you are getting the notion that Taiwan is “losing its international status” when the first multitrillion company in the world and its customers is so dependent on it. Taiwan’s “international status” isn’t conditioned on the companies they can bully to keep from recognizing criticism coming from over there regarding mainland China, it’s industrial, technological, and military.
I can agree with some of the things you’ve said elsewhere. China is a successful country, and given time it will surpass Taiwan in terms of advanced microchip manufacture. It could even decide a fast one by not invading one and essentially causing the bursting of the AI bubble to be that much worse for US investors that have gone all in on it.
The problem with China is that it is also facing economic problems itself, which usually causes the more deranged and desperate notions to be the deciding factor. The enemies it is making internationally and their attempts to impose their will over other countries and their industrial sectors in its rise to power also isn’t helping it out, and they aren’t even trying or capable of winning a cultural war when part of it requires a great amount more censorship than the societies they want to impose on. It is under an authoritarian government that still has a lot of its founding military mindset. If China was forward thinking and was capable of using PR to control their messaging instead of suppression, they would be a lot more successful and a lot less prone to the internal corruption they now have to deal with, often severely in place of effectively.