all 6 comments

[–]bife_de_lomo 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

At least Intel has a sizeable manufacturing presence in the US. Europe needs to sort itself out quickly!

[–]Insider 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

This issue may be a bit over blown, they could easily just fuck Taiwan over and take it, like what happened with Japan.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

You think the USA could win a war against China for Taiwan? I have news for you and it is not good. China will nuke Taiwan before letting the USA have it.

[–]Insider 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I'm not talking about war. US is much better than China at espionage and illegally regulating international companies. They could easily infiltrate and take Taiwan chip technology if they wanted to.

In the 1980's, Toshiba was painted as a national security concern (similar to Huawei today) and the US banned their products and jailed their executives. The CIA took all their technical documents. It was just a coincidence that they were the main rivals to the US's chip industry at the time. Another situation was FBI agents posing as IBM engineers and selling proprietary documents to Japanese firms. Then they used this as "evidence" of Japanese corporate theft.

Here's the 1982 article on the FBI scheme: https://www.nytimes.com/1982/06/23/business/japanese-executives-charged-in-ibm-theft-case.html

There were similar ops against European companies using information obtained by the Patriot Act. Like against Siemens or Alstrom's tech transfer to their US rival GE.

Pretty much zero chance China nukes Taiwan, especially with the fallout affecting their own country the most. At worst, they may do a Ukraine style invasion, but they've been trying to avoid it for as long as possible. Out of all the superpowers, they've had the least military action. Even Canada and their 2 soldiers have had more military ops than China. All China does is run drills. Their biggest engagement in recent years was against India...where both sides agreed not to use weapons and they had slap fights.

[–]Insider 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

In terms of a regional war, US wouldn't win, but they could milk it for the MIC like with Ukraine. Also depends if they get Japan, South Korea, India and other controlled nations involved. In a regional conflict, China may win the battle for Taiwan, but they'd lose the war (mass sanctions, isolation, wasted money on military endeavors, negative propaganda throughout the world, justification for more CIA ops against them, possibly losing their Belt and Road Initiative project, etc.)

In terms of a world war, China loses imo. The Western oligarchs then head to their New Zealand bunkers to hide from nuclear fallout where they can rule the world with their largest hindrance gone.

[–]Fiyanggu 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Whether or not China takes Taiwan, the Chinese will catch up and dominate high end semiconductors.