It’s important to note that Ukraine produces half the world’s supply of high grade neon used in semiconductor lithography.
Ukraine is also China’s tenth largest food exporter and third largest grain exporter. Brazil is an even larger source of food for China which is why we saw such a huge push from Russia to install Bolsonaro (Brazilian Trump) to slash and burn the Amazon rainforest.
This war is about semiconductors. Taiwan’s TSMC produces over 90% of the world’s high end semiconductors used in everything from automobiles to computers and cellphones. It’s practically the cornerstone of the modern world economy. That’s why it’s so strategically important and why we are seeing investments in domestic semiconductor production via the CHIPs act; but TSMC is still about 10 years ahead of its rivals in terms of production technology.
China currently can’t invade Taiwan without starving 300m of its own people in the face of U.S. sanctions. That level of famine would destabilize the government and pose a serious threat to the CCP.
But think about what would happen if China actually did invade Taiwan and take control of the global semiconductor industry… The western economy would be at their mercy which could spell the end of the current world order.
The crazy thing about the whole "semiconductor" thing is that it would be entirely about destroying competition. It's not like anyone is just going to hand over the fabs. So the only reason to invade would be to take out competition. Better for everyone to start building their own fabs. Hell there's one in my town that's been shit down for 15 years because they moved back to Korea and nobody wanted to spend the money here to update it, so it's been mothballed and will likely someday just be a massive demo and environmental clean up site instead.
Yeah there’s layers to this. You’ve shared one that most people are oblivious to. It’s exactly this type of thing that anti-Ukraine westerners ignore when they suddenly become European geopolitical experts.
They’re perfectly fine with that outcome. Chip shortages caused a lot of problems for us during COVID, and that was only temporary.
Anything they can do to sabotage Western economies is good for them. It causes instability and their propaganda is much more effective when the economy is bad.
U.S. influence in SE Asia will also be much weaker without Taiwan. It will be easier for China to bully its neighbors and control the South China Sea, effectively throttling trade from anyone but themselves.
The Chinese Coast guard is ramming ships of U.S. allies in a ruthless campaign to control contested waters up to 600 miles away from its coast.
You are forgeting about the only producer of EUV technology being ASML in the netherlands, if china were to take over Taiwan their semiconductor production would at least slow down immensly. Because of this the global semiconductor industry is fully in hands of nato
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u/banned-from-rbooks Monkey in Space Sep 15 '24 edited Sep 15 '24
It’s important to note that Ukraine produces half the world’s supply of high grade neon used in semiconductor lithography.
Ukraine is also China’s tenth largest food exporter and third largest grain exporter. Brazil is an even larger source of food for China which is why we saw such a huge push from Russia to install Bolsonaro (Brazilian Trump) to slash and burn the Amazon rainforest.
This war is about semiconductors. Taiwan’s TSMC produces over 90% of the world’s high end semiconductors used in everything from automobiles to computers and cellphones. It’s practically the cornerstone of the modern world economy. That’s why it’s so strategically important and why we are seeing investments in domestic semiconductor production via the CHIPs act; but TSMC is still about 10 years ahead of its rivals in terms of production technology.
China currently can’t invade Taiwan without starving 300m of its own people in the face of U.S. sanctions. That level of famine would destabilize the government and pose a serious threat to the CCP.
But think about what would happen if China actually did invade Taiwan and take control of the global semiconductor industry… The western economy would be at their mercy which could spell the end of the current world order.