Your domestic fab capability can't run without thousands of consumables, and services only available in Asia. USA is not semiconductor self-sufficient since eighties, and cannot be any more, just like anybody else.
Semi is the most globalised industry spanning 28 countries, with USA, China, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, SK, Japan, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands being able to singlehandedly stop the whole of it.
It's a naive thinking "once TSMC will complete Arizona megafab, we can abandon Taiwan." There, are as I said, hundreds of critical single supplier globally pieces of equipment, services, and materials that most of the world had zero idea about. How about nanoneedle probes capable of testing M0 the entire industry depends on, for which there is 1 small company for the entire world.
The USA has a long, long history of being able to move when it has to. I'm pretty sure that if they want to re-create a particular level of expertise that they will be able to do so, given enough time.
The DoD has identified the loss of manufacturing capability as a national security risk. Maybe lower labor costs were the impetus of off-shoring manufacturing, but nearly 40 years since globalization took hold there's also a lot of manufacturing that has to go overseas simply because America is no longer able or willing to do it. Could the US bring back that capability? As you said, even if there was the will it wouldn't happen overnight.
I think you have no idea what entails what you are talking about. The world of semi has moved enormously since eighties, when the only country outside of USA with serious chip industry was Japan. Aside from "end of the pipe" fabs, and fab owners, everything else moved out, or never ever been a thing in USA.
US semiconductor equipment from LAM, and Applied Materials are more than half imported parts. US semi industry never used OSATs, until it had to ship their chips to Asia for that, and thus missed out on most of new packaging, and test tech which evolved outside of the US. Similarly for almost everything else.
Replacing Asian material suppliers for the US will be as hard as for China to develop a domestic photolithography stepper.
I am not telling you to shut up, and I am telling you to take a deep breath, and think this over after reading up on topic a bit.
"We will betray our allies, and they will leave us alone" is a form of defeatism, and entertaining others into this way of thinking is not what a citizen of NATO country should do, let alone a public figure.
I don't think the argument should really be framed that the goal is for the US to become fully fab self-sufficient. Rather, this is about a very specific risk scenario. I think the distinction is that Taiwan is in a particularly precarious situation with a rising superpower openly wanting to reclaim it. And that rising superpower has some cultural distinction that make it a liability to US interests. The other single-point failures in the supply chain don't appear to be at that level of risk.
This was my thinking as well. Even the verbiage is similar to what China has said in the past about Taiwan, except now it is Russia saying it about Ukraine.
China is estimated to have approximately 100 nuclear warheads and delivery systems that can reach the continental United States, anything over that would not make much sense anyway. Smaller is a relative term, in absolute terms this is a devastatingly powerful set of weapons.
China has a more powerful military than Russia at this point and vastly superior manufacturing and economic means to sustain it and push further. China's nuclear arsenal is merely smaller, but so what, nobody needs 10,000 nukes anyway. A thousand well-aimed nukes will do the job.
And I once again asking the age-old question: Are you really sure that the people in power would choose a military conflict with China to stop the invasion, when simply destroying TSMC can be the alternative? Surely, if the fabs are destroyed, half of the world’s semiconductor market would evaporate, but the cost of a military conflict with a superpower like China is extremely high as well.
There have been unsubstantiated rumors for years that the Taiwanese military has outfitted TSMC fabs with explosives that can be rigged to go off in the event of a mainland invasion in order to deny China access to TSMC capabilities. Even physical destruction may be unnecessary. Due to the complexity of the semiconductor supply chain, many say that an embargo of materials and the removal of experts are enough to paralyze the fabs for many years.
Taiwan has never been a NATO member. Taiwan has semiconductors western industry depends on. And the primary reason for AUKUS and giving the Aussies nuclear sub tech is precisely so their subs will have the range to help counter China. China just "sanctioned" (largely performative) Lockheed and Boeing over a $100 million arms sale to Taiwan.
Never mind various economic measures from all parts of the West. The developed world is already doing things about China's Taiwan ambitions, and have motivations far stronger than altruism to continue doing so. Ukraine by contrast is not as well integrated as Taiwan, and it's their desire to be integrated that set Putin off in the first place. If said integration meant nothing, Putin wouldn't be invading.
Well, let's see what happens when Taiwan applies to NATO then.
> Taiwan has semiconductors western industry depends on.
For once it isn't about oil.
> And the primary reason for AUKUS and giving the Aussies nuclear sub tech is precisely so their subs will have the range to help counter China.
I'm sure the Chinese are most impressed. But Australia too will stand by when the Chinese invade Taiwan.
> China just "sanctioned" (largely performative) Lockheed and Boeing over a $100 million arms sale to Taiwan.
You need to separate out the economic incentives from the political ones there to get a clearer picture of what is happening.
> Never mind various economic measures from all parts of the West. The developed world is already doing things about China's Taiwan ambitions, and have motivations far stronger than altruism to continue doing so.
China doesn't care about any of that: they care about the United States and them alone because that is the only country that can credibly put up enough force projected into that region to put a stop to it if they decide to move.
> Ukraine by contrast is not as well integrated as Taiwan, and it's their desire to be integrated that set Putin off in the first place.
You could Swap Ukraine and Taiwan and substitute Xi and you have a winner at some point in the future, provided Taiwan would express a desire to join NATO.
> If said integration meant nothing, Putin wouldn't be invading.
Put would invade regardless, and this is the mistake that everybody is making: the NATO approach is a figleaf, that only happened after things had already started to slide inside Ukraine. But I'm pretty sure that only a very small fraction of HN is aware of that.
Was placed to serve as a Russian puppet to keep Ukraine out of the influence of the West, which the country overwhelmingly wanted. After being tossed out (he's since moved to Russia) the whole separatism affair started fueled by Russia. Ukraine had every right to do so, and the occupation and subsequent invasion are proof positive that Ukraine was right about Russia's intentions, not the other way around.
You will find a lively corresponding sentiment in lots of other former USSR states.
I don't think Taiwan will apply for NATO membership. They'll run out strategic ambiguity as long as possible.
Regardless, when I say "western integration" I don't mean hard NATO membership. Taiwan is a greater economic player than Ukraine, and a very defensible island, with a very different set of political entanglements. The situations may look similar in the abstract, but it's comparing oranges to lemons.
I'm also not sure why you think the Aussies would stand by. They're already in their own economic war with China and by joining AUKUS have made their position abundantly clear. New Zealand would probably stand by, but honestly they don't matter that much militarily.
China is making enemy after enemy on the assumption that their enemies are fundamentally weak/corrupt and can be rolled over, while uniting under an ethno-nationalist/cult of personality leadership. They aren't the first in history to make that mistake. And if they continue down that road it ends in bloody defeat.
...was placed to serve as a Russian puppet to keep Ukraine out of the influence of the West, which the country overwhelmingly wanted. After being tossed out...
Could some trouble have been avoided if Yanukovych had left office via election rather than via coup? How many Ukrainians really considered his negotiation tactics with EU so unbecoming that he should have been summarily removed via "extralegal" means?
It's not "a simple question", it's a simpleton question. Either in the sense that it's posed by a simpleton, or that it's posed by someone who hopes that the recipients are simpletons.
Either way, the reason it can't have a simple answer is that it's an invalid question, since it presupposes something which isn't true. (As further explained in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30539775 .)
And IMO it's a bit suspicious that so many of the "simple questions" on this subject just happen to be couched in Putlin propaganda terms.
We can click through and read wikipedia just like you did. They held that vote after he had fled the nation due to the violent occupation of many government buildings. In fact they held that vote while the parliament building was so occupied.
"Settled history" is for fools. I'm on the side of Ukrainians who want to live in peace and prosperity rather than suffering violence and privation. For that particular interest, it seems that holding elections could be superior to violently occupying government buildings. This "Revolution of Dignity" smelled even more CIA than January 6 did. Mrs. Robert Kagan was just one of the many spooks who left her bloody fingerprints on this supposedly sovereign nation. You call Yanukovych a stooge literally because he negotiated too firmly with EU. This seems similar to Trump being impeached because he delayed sending the same armaments to Ukraine that Obama had refused to send his entire time in office. (It seems maybe those armaments have not had the advertised effect?) Any molehill can be puffed up to a mountain, when the USA military-industrial complex might thereby grind more human lives into dollars...
Goodness, it's enlightening to be told what I mean. Yes you've consistently avoided answering the question with which I started this thread: are elections better than violent coups?
One guess how I'm inclined to take that...
The vast majority of Ukrainians are not responsible for their misfortunes over the last decade. Certainly they have my sympathy. Violent coups usually harm the societies in which they occur, so the tiny minority of Ukrainians who took part in that coup have harmed their nation and their fellow Ukrainians. That harm has taken the form of a Russian invasion, but if it had happened somewhere else at some other time (e.g. Iran, in 1953) the harm would have come anyway.
Eventually, if we survive long enough, humans will learn to organize (and re-organize!) ourselves without large-scale violence. Some had imagined that democracy might be a part of that, but few today seem to agree.
The problem is that Taiwan is 20 miles from China and 5,500 to the U.S. (6,500 to the lower 48). It's easy to say that we will defend Taiwan now when the war would be a quick victory. Less so as China continues to close the military gap making it a difficult war. Even less so when victory becomes questionable or impossible.
The US made their commitments when their opponents were at their nadir neglecting that they'd be challenged when the opponents were at their strongest. Walking back those commitments to what the US is willing and able to defend will continue to be the challenge of the 21st century. There needs to be a strategic re-evaluation of what the US should defend and what they can defend.
IMHO, ultimately the either should not or can not defend Eastern Europe bordering Russia, The Caucasus, Saudi Arabia, and Taiwan. How to wiggle out of those commitments without giving Russia, China, & Iran ideas is the tough part.
A bigger concern to me is that Taiwan is probably more disposable to China than it is to the rest of the world. China would significantly benefit its internal semiconductor industry by destroying fabs in Taiwan while the rest of the world would be starved of critical semiconductors, and given the active US sanctions towards Huawei in China... The balance of invade vs don't invade for China regarding Taiwan is slowly shifting.
The possible what-if scenarios arising from unchecked expansion of superpowers is disturbing.
[0] clarified to be within TW relations act, i.e. help TW defend itself, aka, basically no boots on ground in Ukraine tier of promise. US has even less capability of defending TW within first island chain then it does Ukraine. The idea of course is there will be some sort of naval contest, but that will likely change once PRC expands nuclear arsenal to the point of "That’s a world war when Americans and China start shooting at one another".
> USA has gone on record saying it will fall on the sword for Taiwan.
I'll believe that when I see it, under Biden, maybe. But that may also just be posturing and probably won't last longer than the moment that the USA can become independent of Taiwanese manufacturing capabilities at which point it would actually be in the US' interest if Taiwan would no longer be able to produce.
I am very concerned about exactly this. I think it would be very well at this moment to visibly increase our support for Taiwan, and our preparations for a confrontation with China.
i thought the same about Ukraine back in 2014 when Russia took the Crimean peninsula. after all we told them we would defend them if they handed over their nuclear missiles. I thought the west would do something about Hong Kong... I have thought a lot of things I was sadly wrong about.
