perhaps lot of european people need to have a wake up call. Europe is involved in a proxy war of China vs US. where EU associate member is fighting with china proxy, Russia.

Other proxies are Iran with their satelites, without china neither Iran or Russia would not survive current wars they sponsor agaist west.

as much as I hate current US admin, they push to increase NATO spending etc.

how is that not "uniting" ?

China is actively supporting the Russian army. They don't want Russia to lose. The Russians won't stop in Ukraine. It can't be more clear than this which country is a greater danger to the West.

> Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the European Union’s top diplomat that Beijing can’t accept Russia losing its war against Ukraine as this could allow the United States to turn its full attention to China, an official briefed on the talks said, contradicting Beijing’s public position of neutrality in the conflict. https://edition.cnn.com/2025/07/04/europe/china-ukraine-eu-w...

Grow up. The US is posturing compared to China that puts boots on the ground and fires at ships belonging to "allies".

Sure , trump administration trying to protect associate members of eu is not as good partner as China who directly support Russia , Iran and other country trying to wipe west, very logical

There are 78 Arleigh Burkes completed, six in the build stage, and 15 on order.

There were only 31 Spruances and 4 Kidds.

That seems like an investment in destroyers, and much more capable ones than it's predecessors at that. Argubly more capable than even the Ticonderoga.

But maybe you mean something else I'm not groking.

> how could the US possibly dislodge them without destroying the thing they want to protect?

I would instead assert that it is very likely that the US would destroy the fabs rather than allow China to gain control of them through an act of aggression.

The doctrine of mutually assured destruction has been around a long time. The international players are familiar with it.

> If China sent troops to secure the Taiwanese fabs, how could the US possibly dislodge them without destroying the thing they want to protect?

The valuable bits and pieces are already equipped with a self destruct mechanism.

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/tsmcs-euv-machine...

Taiwan is armed to the teeth. A full engagement would most likely destroy large sections of Taiwan and Southern China.

> could the US possibly dislodge them without destroying the thing they want to protect?

The mask slips: I thought the USA wanted to protect Taiwanese democracy.

Silly me.

All the best to war games seem pretty bleak given the relative salience of the issue between US & China.

Being a small island it’s much more of a zero sum / all or nothing fight than say Ukraine where at some point they can agree on a line on the map for Putin to walk away with a territorial partial win.

Lot of headwind for US between ship building, distance, whether Japan allows usage of bases, total manpower, Chinese ship killer missiles, authoritarian dictatorships willingness to throw manpower into meat grinders, etc.

Not that it’s a slam dunk for China either - beach landings are hard, and their war machine is largely unproven.

The most likely outcome is Taiwan or US destroy the fabs in event of invasion.

It was a stated goal of the EU - peace through trade.

It wasnt the oil or gas. Europe was perfectly capable of substituting both.

They got away with it because they built up their industrial base while the west let its industrial base wither. It's only starting to dawn on our leaders (3+ years in) now that dropping the ball on stuff like steel, mortar and missile production actually loses wars and that it takes years to undo those mistakes.

The west's Achilles heel was always profit driven capitalism + a superiority complex. All China had to do was to systematically undercut the west on industrial inputs while its superiority complex held firm and the west took care of hollowing out its own economic and military potential.

Even today when the US produces ~50/year patriots for the entire west and Ukraine needs ~400-500/year to stay afloat some people are still telling fairy tales about how a lack of "will" was the only thing standing between putin and domination. The superiority complex hasnt even died yet.

The supply chains for chip production terminate in Asia but there aren’t many inputs that originate there (which is by design). The real value to be lost are the Taiwanese engineers themselves.

Of course it would continue to operate. The Chinese division of Arm went rogue and basically captured the entire operation from within. USA has both the engineering expertise and the incentive to do the same with an entire chip fab, if push came to shove.

https://semianalysis.com/2021/08/27/the-semiconductor-heist-...

True. We think about very narrowly when it comes to ICs. Mostly CPUs and GPUs, but there's a whole fleet of supporting ICs or other purpose built silicon which needs fabs, from simple capacitors, to power regulators and ASICs.

So, having them spread over is nice, but not enough.

This may be the case but China is also steadily building the specific capacity to take the island by force. Circumstances could easily change. What if they decide the Taiwanese people will never accept unification, or something unexpected happens to the Chinese leadership? The US gets heavily engaged in a different war?

Maybe... but it would be a great excuse to wipe China off the map.

In a world of US and China being at odds with each other and controlling a GPU factory each, AI for Europe, Japan, Australia, etc becomes a game of who can kiss ass better and hoping the master doesn't change the rules further.

There should be more places that can produce enough energy and have AI leverage.

> The way to reduce the risk is to diversify. Taiwan with a China risk and the US with a "US risk" is much safer than either alone.

Not really. Taiwan with a China risk means China has pressure to not change the status quo.

US with a US risk means they have a vested interest to facilitate China's imperialistic agenda to try dethrone Taiwan as a competitor in the chip market.

That, coupled with the imbecile tariff war, underlines the unacceptable risk presented by the "US risk".

This seems slightly inconsistent with them testing all cartel member's bulbs and fining those who surpassed 1000 hours. If shorter-lasting bulbs were better looking and more efficient their fining mechanism would be energy efficiency / appearance related.

Or require no fines at all. It's much simpler to sell a non-sickly looking bulb at the store and other companies would converge.

I wonder what the economic calculation looks like. How much efficiency would be lost by doubling the lifespan? It depends on the relative price of lightbulbs and electricity, and the cost (in time/effort/inconvenience) when a bulb blows.

> the cost of electricity used by the bulb is easily as much as the replacement bulb

This point is only relevant if 1000 hour old bulbs cost more electricity to run than new bulbs. Maybe I don't understand how old bulbs worked but why couldn't they invent ways to make bulbs run hot which also last longer than 1000 hours.

It's fine to complain it's a bad example of "planned obsolescence", but I hope you didn't downvote me for that (i got a few downs).

I was just talking about organization of competitive companies for price manipulation, but specifically controlled for the benefit of the public - such that we don't lose the US plant due to natural market forces.

It's why ULA is still in business despite SpaceX being significantly cheaper.

It was not given away - it was won by the Taiwanese, who bet on the fabless-foundry business model and executed magnificently.

I’m no expert but I believe it’s because Taiwan bet heavily on a process known as Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV).

The US companies cough Intel cough did not. Which is part of the reason they are laying off workers

But do you think Taiwan will let the US get away with not helping them?

It would mean TSMC would basically become a US company, right?

Political reunification, i.e. land > people, see PRC saying "keep the island not the people". At this point no amphibious assault needed, just blockading TW and turning into gaza via mainland munitions now that starving masses is normalized is an option too.

1) politics 2) breaking the US's submarine detection on the pacific, so now they can essentially slip unlimited undetected submarines into the pacific (and therefore the atlantic/indian) 3) being harder to navally blockade 4) disrupt the West's military chip advantage

The thing about autocracies, there is nobody to stop an obviously wrong decision (for example, Russian invasion of Ukraine).

They would. The main reason has always been the location. It’s right at the doorstep of China. It’s the same reason when Russia tried to install missile in Cuba, Americans dont like that. Cuba “crisis” is actually a US centric term. Also on east coast of Taiwan, theres a deep waters, submarines can enter pacific ocean much more stealthily.

Everything else is just bonus to them. Semiconductors, supporting nationalism, you name it.

China is not interested in Taiwan for the chips. They want it back since they believe Taiwan is part of China.

Wasn't China already pissed about Taiwan long before Taiwan was doing a lot of semiconductor manufacturing?

China has wanted Taiwan long before they fabbed semiconductors. It's a matter of ego and nationalism, not economics.

It's also political: China hates that there's a Western-style democracy full of "Chinese rebels" on an island 80 miles from their doorstep. They also don't like the cozy relationship between the Taiwanese and US militaries.

Probably, my understanding is that the primary reason China cares about Taiwan is internal pressure about the separatism. The power Taiwan has is the only reason they haven’t acted.

Yes, they would. However, if Taiwan wasn’t as important to the world because of their chips then the world would probably not care as much about what communist China wants to do to them.

Ukraine split from the Soviet Union in 1991 and then 31 years later Russia invaded to take it back.

It was autocorrect - I have no idea why it’s in there to be honest. Neat to know the right way to write it though - thanks

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream_pipelines_sabotage

NS1 was hit at the same time as well.

NS2 had not been activated and NS1 was undergoing work at the time.

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The globe is one-half empty water (Pacific) and one-half continents. China is east on the continent half.

Europe is west of the US

No, it’s east. Far east.

Not if the earth is flat!

You wrote "west" not "The West". Not that the latter would make any more sense.

I believe they meant that taiwanese manufacturing is superior to american..

Given this, I'm surprised they're only looking at a 5%-20% cost increase.

Seems like it is also bad for the countries actually making stuff too.

Where would they be if their exports were significantly slashed? They didn’t develop all that manufacturing capacity to sell domestically.

Is it ridiculous to expect an economy, such as the US, to produce things of value?

The author of the post you are responding to has a valid point. Consumption alone isn't sustainable.

The argument wasn't about chips specifically, but contributing in general. If your city has a workforce that produces something, you can use the money from selling that stuff to buy, for example, food. If you don't, in western countries, mostly the welfare state steps in. And that's okay, we humans are social animals and I wouldn't have it any other way. But the welfare state has to be backed by productivity. Food and other stuff has to be produced by someone.

And when we're talking about international relations, if your exports don't cover your imports, eventually you'll go bankrupt.

I think you're oversimplifying the argument in order to win internet points.

People of like minds and compatible values can and should work together and form agreements to allow each other to specialize in some ways and play to each others' strengths.

But in the West, our values are not compatible with the Chinese government's.

It's calorie dense and exceedingly easy to store for long periods, providing us with an extremely high degree of food security. That said I agree with the sentiment that farm subsidies could probably use some improvement.

Manufacturing of the trivial items can be brought online in a reasonable timeframe. The lead time on a modern process node on the other hand is measured in years, and that's when you already know what you're doing. China still hasn't achieved state of the art even after everything they've invested over the past 20 years or so.

> You'll be paying a huge premium just so a politician can get a couple of favorable headlines

You're paying a premium to reduce the cross section of risk that your local economy is exposed to. The cost savings of globalization do not come without their own downsides.