Summary
China is gaining global support for its claim over Taiwan, with 70 countries now endorsing its sovereignty and unification efforts—many omitting calls for peaceful resolution.
This shift follows China’s diplomatic push targeting the Global South, leveraging economic ties through infrastructure projects.
China looks to preempt Western sanctions in a Taiwan conflict by securing international legitimacy. Meanwhile, the U.S. and allies struggle to counter China’s influence.
Trump’s return signals a firmer stance, but China’s diplomatic momentum complicates efforts to rally support against aggression.
All of them.
The US plants may be coming online but it will still be years before they’re at production capacity, and they’ll probably never have all of the same production capabilities. The chip fabrication lines in Taiwan have been decades in development and growth.
Also even if we could make all of the chips, Taiwan still holds almost all the other incidental processes (especially packaging) that most advanced chip designs require these days.
Yeah, it’s more than just the fabrication machines, it’s a massive logistics network.
Decades the US can learn from to catch up quicker and eventually eclipse them.
We literally eliminated the Department of Education.
Maybe. Some of the older fabrication is still in heavy production use (e.g. 28nm, 16nm, 7nm):
These produce a lot of the chips that go into everything electronic, things like bus controllers and timing ICs, which are needed in higher volumes than CPUs and GPUs. But I kind of doubt the older fab technology will be a priority to build in the new facility.
TSMC isn’t just a single factory production line that gets upgraded to the latest and greatest every year. It’s a collection of many fabrication technologies that has grown and developed organically over time. While it will be helpful to build a new facility with the benefit of lessons learned in Taiwan, it will not be possible to completely replicate what that original facility is.
It’s wild how much stuff is manufactured on processes considered obsolete for high end cpu/gpu production
The Z80 (which was the core processor of the TI-8x calculators) was only just discontinued last year. Lots of old chip designs find uses in embedded devices and consumer electronics.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.