Japan and America have now both gotten TSMC to commit to a decent level of domestic advanced-node fabrication.
Meanwhile Europe only got 40k WSPMs of 12+ nm capacity: https://overclock3d.net/news/software/bringing_advanced_semi...
ASML and its mostly European suppliers is still the key chokepoint that prevents highend semiconductor fabrication from moving to China.
Germany squandered so much money on nonsense, when they could have simply driven the few kilometers over to Eindhoven and bought an ASML machine for "Silicon Saxony". Sure, it would have taken years and years and serious commitment by the government and private sector to make that a successful move. But instead of putting in the hard work with a clear vision for the future, we mostly spend our time whining and wailing. It's a shame.
The only forward facing government that actually had a drive to change anything useful for the future broke apart with internal squabbles, with a big part of it by the market liberals torpedoing things left and right. And now we're back to a government of stand still, like we did the almost two decades before.
We get what we deserve.
This standstill mostly started happening when the capitalism took hold too deep and wide, look at Sweden and its golden age that lasted until all the restrictions on capitalism were silently removed.
While capitalism is a good model, it needs to be kept balanced, restricted..
Shareholder primacy is ruining everything, too much influence in politics from too many external sources.
Taiwanese politicians, like those under American-style democracy in many regions, only care about safeguarding their own interests and have no concern for how to protect the interests of the public. Once TSMC’s factories are completed in Japan and the United States and the technology is secured, Taiwan will no longer have any value worth protecting. Of course, the politicians can always take planes and leave in advance.
Isn’t this an erosion of the silicon shield Taiwan is protected by? If they make semiconductors everywhere else then the world has less economic incentive to protect Taiwan from war.
The world won’t allow a dependence on a single geopolitically threatened entity in the long run, so either they defuse that risk themselves or risk a competitor filling that role. This move is better for TSMC itself.
The silicon shield became a slogan that has only been popularized in recent years. The potential crisis of war has been there for more than half a century (even before semiconductors became a thing). The real value proposition of the status quo is the freedom of navigation between the northeastern Asian countries and the SEA (the Strait of Malacca, aka the lifeline of energy imports), and the consequential domino effect of the entire western Pacific.
Also, not sure why everyone forgets about it. People should have learned from the experience of the pandemic that the cutting-edge foundry nodes are not really the crucial ones, as being the bottleneck of industrial infrastructure. A delay of the next-gen iPhone or RTX gaming card isn't that catastrophic. But a shortage of embedded MCUs, which are actually fabricated by mature nodes, could stall the entire industrial base of a country.
Seems likely that Takaichi has given Taiwan a Japanese security guarantee. [1] This may be a quid pro quo.
She didn't give a security guarantee. And even if she wanted she can't.
Japan can't even sell arms to Taiwan right now. Even starting selling arms would be a huge change, let alone a mutual defensive pact.
It's extremely hard to change the constitution of Japan. It's the only constitution that has never been revised since WWII. LDP has been pushing this agenda for decades and nothing really happened.
She just won a super majority in their legislature, she can even amend the constitution now.
No, she can't.
The process to amend the constitution of Japan [0]:
1. two thirds of the house
2. two thirds of the senate
3. referendum
LDP just won the house. IF all LDP house representatives agreed with Takaichi then she could pass the first stage. Only two left!
[0]: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E5%9B%BD%E6...
Can she? As far as I've understood it, the LDP isn't a particularly united party.
Despite what Takaichi says, if there is a war in Taiwan, Japan can only defend itself and it's interests in its sovereign territory. Japan's pacifist constitution only allows defense, even building an aircraft carrier was very controversial because it's considered to be too offensive. It's highly unlikely that Japan will actively help Taiwan defend itself
Laws and rules can be changed.
Or defending taiwan can be PR'd into a self-defending message.
> Japan's pacifist constitution only allows defense
She just won a super majority in the legislature that allows her to change the constitution.
My guess: Japan deletes the pacifist promises in its constitution, fully rearms, announces nuclear weapons capability (or does an Israel and ‘refuses to confirm or deny’), and signs a mutual defense pact with Taiwan.
Yes, it is. The unfortunate reality is that western societies care more about TSMC than Taiwan, and they’re hedging their bets this way.
Disagree. Making the world less centralized to TSMC chips makes less incentive to invade at the near future. There is no strategic upside to do it right now. If nothing else, to me it seems china is a strategic mover, and will not sacrifice anything for no strategic value.
China doesn't want to invade Taiwan for TSMC.
If TSMC didn't exist, China would probably have already invaded Taiwan.
That’s a deeply oversimplified understanding of Taiwan and reunification. There’s so much good reading on the topic out there and it’s really worth even just skimming the surface of it.
Yes.
But it will happen one way or another. Taiwan's Sovereignty is completely depending on one single country, the US. It's not like that Taiwan can just say no if the US demands more diversified chip production.
Who would protect Taiwan anymore? I have my doubts that any prior defense agreement would be upheld today.
What defense agreements?
But why should the world depend on a single country or entity? Everything should be diversified.
America doesn't defend taiwan for its semiconductors - it's all american IP anyways. They defend it for the same reason they defend japan and Phillipines - to control the pacific "frontier" these three countries form before guam. Typically against China, but they would do the same nonetheless.
No. To get to Taiwan, Mainland Taiwan first has to go through China, the ocean, and Taiwan. They’ll be fine without anyone else’s help.
Nature is healing.jpg
China has many faults. Invading other countries is not one of them. They haven’t dropped bombs on foreign soil in over 40 years. The Chinese playbook here is to first copy then out-scale and out-innovate until eventually nobody remembers why Taiwan was so important.
If this was just about semiconductors then this would be a reasonable take but I doubt semi-conductors are anything more than a minor footnote in China’s strategic calculus vis-a-vis Taiwan.
Reunification with Taiwan has been a major policy goal of the CCP since the civil war and is one of Xi’s explicit policy goals. He just reaffirmed this commitment as part of his New Year’s speech.
Historically China has lacked force projection capability. However it has had a multi-decade modernisation and military build-up which has drastically changed this situation.
Further we’ve seen significant tightening of CCP control over society and in particular the military in Xi’s term.
A straight forward analysis of these events, in line with Xi’s public statements and past Chinese actions, is that the ground work is being laid for encirclement of Taiwan followed by China taking over, by force if necessary.
Have you ever heard of Tibet?
This is more than 40 years ago and they likely didn't need many bombs for it.