Taiwan in all aspects is a small and remote country with little strategic importance. Except for tiny detail of holding 60% of semiconductor market. What Taiwan has is an economic equivalent of nuclear arsenal. In any practical time frame US have no other option but fight in case of Xi doing big funnier.
Disagree. Taiwan is the floodgate holding back the PLAN in the first island chain. If the island is lost, PRC submarines would enter the Pacific without the US having a chance to intercept them.
Japan actually doesn't really have a choice to stay out of it anymore. The gap between China and Taiwan is like 110 miles, but the closest inhabited Japanese island, Yonaguni, is only 67 miles away from Taiwan. For decades, it was long assumed that Yonaguni would become part of an evacuation route for Taiwanese civilians in case of invasion. But in 2022, when China threw a ton of missiles at Taiwan as a warning after Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, a few of those missiles landed off the coast of Yonaguni instead. Japan was pretty angry about Chinese missiles landing in Japanese waters, but China responded by stating that they didn't recognize those as Japanese waters (way to dig yourself further into a hole, China).
Basically, if China actually invades Taiwan, Japan will wind up taking collateral damage no matter if they enter the war or not. As a result, Japan has been moving missile defense systems and larger JSDF garrisons to Yonaguni.
Honestly imo it's a good thing. Makes it so we can't have stupid idiots (in power) do the whole "US needs money, let them negotiate peace with the China" thing
Anthropic future selection.
Here's how it works. It's possible to make A LOT of simulations. So most beings that see what we see are actually in ancestor simulations. Therefore, our observations are selected onto timelines where humanity survives.
And one factor that makes humanity more likely to survive rouge AGI, putting most of the semiconductors somewhere they are likely to be bombed just before AGI becomes a thing, thus knocking back compute capacity at a key moment.
How is this "openAI Advertizing"?
"Our product could destroy the world, buy it now" is at least a somewhat unusual sales pitch.
And there have been people concerned about one day AI being smart and malevolent and trying to destroy the world for a long time. I mean the general idea of animate creations turning against us dates back to at least Frankenstein. A more AI based view, at least back to the 1960's.
I think that Current AI has some minor concerns associated with it. The standard misleading medical advice, deepfake porn etc. These aren't terribly huge problems, but some regulation is justified.
In the 1990's there was a dot com bubble. This was a point where many people knew the internet would be important one day. But people hadn't quite worked out how, and the tech wasn't quite there yet. So people invested, hoping to be the first to invest in google or amazon. But a lot of those first wave companies failed, because the tech wasn't quite ready and/or they hadn't found the killer app. We are in a dot com bubble for AI.
Current AI tech has impressive demos, but still has lots of oddities, bugs, limitations etc. If you want to make a compilation of fails, you can find plenty of 6 fingered hands. But the tech has gone from not existing at all, to kind of sometimes working in a few years. Progress in the field is pretty fast.
There are theoretical arguments to suspect that future AI might be very dangerous at some point. Like kill all humans dangerous. This is something that quite a few prominent AI experts are concerned about.
There is quite a bit of uncertainty about if/when such AI will arrive. This includes some short timelines.
If "big wind turbine" argues that climate change is bad, and we should shut down coal power plants, this doesn't mean climate change doesn't exist. To determine the truth, you must stare directly at the tech itself. Not look at the companies PR and assume they are lying.
Yes there exists a fake demo, made by openAI. There also exists a lot of impressive stuff that works.
> these "experts" you most likely mean are a part of bizarre cult
Would you include [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart\_J.\_Russell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_J._Russell) Stuart Russel, coauthor of the most popular textbook on AI to be part of this "cult"
> harry potter fanfic writer,
This sounds like a status attack. You think writing fanfic is low status. Issac Newton invented the catflap. But describing him as a "cat accessory inventor" isn't exactly a fair description.
People have hobbies. And that includes writing. And some of that writing is fanfic.
This is a group of people that like to discuss abstract , sometimes philosophical ideas. Roko came up with his basilisk. People looked at it. Mostly decided it was wrong, and abandoned it. That balilisk is used as a "look what these crazy people believe" far more than it is actually believed.
The modern legal system will punish you for murder if you take some actions deliberately to kill someone, but if you take the same actions out of stupidity/carelessness then you will get a lesser sentence for manslaughter. Of course, this depends on the courts ability to guess what you were thinking, and given current limitations in brain scanning tech, this isn't perfect.
Some people follow the heard, believing what everyone else believes.
Some people are independent thinkers. When they are dumb, all the ideas they come up with are bad. When they are smart, they come up with some mixture of good and bad ideas. (Ie Newton had all sorts of nutty theology and alchemy ideas) Coming up with wild new ideas and yet being correct every time is REALLY hard.
If there were complicated reasons to expect AI to be dangerous, and someone rather unusual came up with a bunch of them, what would you expect? A community of people very concerned about AI form around the ideas?
Some things that cults do that communities and organizations don't.
1) Punish members for leaving/questioning the dogma.
2) Sleep deprivation and/or psychological abuse as part of indoctrination.
3) Encourage people to cut off all social contacts with friends/family.
To the best of my knowledge, the lesswrong crowd doesn't do these things.
I would prefer to talk technical arguments about AI rather than social arguments about what the people worried about AI are doing socially.
>Taiwan has already said the will blow up the factories before the let China capture them.
They have said that, but whether or not they will actually do it is another thing altogether. TSMC is the heart of taiwans economy, so destroying it out of spite is just completely illogical and the equivalent of shooting themselves in the head post war, win or lose. Also a taiwan *with* it's fabs intact will be a lot more valuable to China then a taiwan *without it*, so if worse comes to worse and taiwan has to negotiate a surrender, still having those facilities around would give them a leg up in talks opposed to not having them around anymore.
The US on the otherhand could choose to destroy them if it came down to it, partly just depends on when a war would happen. If it happened tomorrow, probably wouldnt be able to meet domestic needs without those fabs, so maybe not, if it happened 10 years from now when we will probably start to see the CHIP act yielding fruit, maybe, but the chances of the US intervening in a potential taiwan conflict will probably go down as well, so who knows.
This is a dead man switch. China will lose a lot of money/people/influence if they attack. It needs to be worth doing an amphibious landing on a country that spent the last 50 years preparing against that scenario. The chips factories are the thing that could balance everything out.
If Taiwan is taken, but the semi conductor factories have been blown up, china just lost a fuckton of soldiers, boats, planes, and probably put under economic sanctions from all the people buying their shits. This would probably collapse their economy. The best defence is making yourself not worth invading.
>It needs to be worth doing an amphibious landing on a country that spent the last 50 years preparing against that scenario. The chips factories are the thing that could balance everything out
No it really doesn't, a PLA invasion of taiwan will likely look nothing like D-Day if the Chinese actually have a brain and actually follow the exercises/DCT they have been doing. Yes amphibious landings are hard, but sieges aren't, and taiwan would be incredibly vulnerable to something like that. Taiwan imports 99% of it's energy ([have 90 days of mandatory storage](https://globaltaiwan.org/2023/09/securing-taiwans-black-gold-a-crude-analysis/) none of which is hardened), along with 70% of it's foodstuffs ([army war college has a pretty good writeup on this problem](https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol53/iss2/4/)). It's civil services are also highly vulnerable, whether that's powerplants, water filtration, sewage systems, or whatever else. In addition[the majority of taiwans fibreoptic cables run through the strait or around taiwan](https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2022/10/31/2003788016) and it would not be at all difficult for the Chinese to cut them, and pretty much completely cut off their internet/connection to the outside world.
If the PLA applies the right pressure, in just a couple weeks taiwans situation could be absolutely catastrophic, with a first world nation in all respects just suddenly looking like Gaza, and having to deal with nightmare situations like starvation, cholera (cause no clean water), shit filled streets (cause no sewage system anymore), no electricity, no internet, rampant diseases, and whatever else. Are the taiwanese people going to fight to the death in this scenario huddled up in caves, or are they going to look at Hong Kong and go "huh, you know that uhh actually doesn't look that bad come to think of it".
If the PLA actually needs to land, it's not going to be on day 1 against a prepared and at full strength ROC military, it's going to be against a completely hollowed out shell which has had the shit bombed out of it for several weeks/months straight and probably will not be able to offer up that much resistance. Again though, they might not even need to do that, all that really has to happen is for the PLA to destroy its C2/C3/C4 nodes and critical military infrastructure (which can probably be done pretty quickly) at which point most coordination will be lost and whatever they manage to preserve will likely not be that much of a threat. Kinda why "hedgehog defense" is stupid imo, doesn't matter how many missiles you have if you don't have any kind of proper integrated defense to accurately cue/aquire targets. If taiwan can't do that they will be blindly flinging missiles like the houthis or Serbs really fucking quickly.
tldr: taiwan isnt a fortress, it's a fucking deathtrap.
Two can play at that game. If the Maoists siege Taiwan, we blow the dams. Hundreds of millions perish. If China wants to turn Taiwan into a death trap, congratulations. China also built their own death traps. A dose of counter-terror terror will sort them out.
>we blow the dams. Hundreds of millions perish.
For one, whether or not a deep strike air campaign will be feasible over china is questionable at this point. Even the more neoconservative CSIS wargames were kinda on the fence about it, and that's even after they nerfed the fuck outta Chinese ew capabilities (I'm sorry, but a 1,000km+ missile will likely encounter some level of transient drift if it's going to be in a heavy ecm environment the whole way, regardless of it's RCF package)
Secondly even if a three gorges strike was successful and could be done, that would be nuclear escalation lmao. It wouldn't be "Bro, 400 million of your people are now underwater, but you have a no first use policy bro, so you can't use your nukes!!!!". Like it's a funny joke, but it's been circlejerked so much here that people have started to believe it's a legitimately credible option.
For Taiwan, using the quasi-nuclear option is not as non-credible as you suggest.
Starvation by siege for Taiwan will have consequences of same proportions just as the nuclear option. The same logic of "yeah, we're not nuking you. We're just killing you all by famine." applies. There is no reason not to shoot for the dam - should Winnie play the military game as it's suggested.
Add-it: I know that for the USA, the struggle will seem important, but its existence will not be on the line. For Taiwan, its existence in its current form will be over before the first PLA guy sets foot on the island....
> same logic of "yeah, we're not nuking you. We're just killing you all by famine." applies
everytime some greenhorn (understandble, we all gotta learn) or tankie (fuck'em) cries about the Yanks dropping the sun on Japan, remind them the firebombings killed and made homeless orders of magnitude more civilians. Their response tells you everything you need to know about which ones we're talking to.
The power of nuclear weapons is that we can do it with one bomb.
Before that, every other major Japanese city had enjoyed visits from 500+ planes. There wasn't much left to bomb.
1930s Japan is the same shit we're witnessing in Russia right now. A society gripped by militant philistinism. Utter indifference to fellow man as long as the metropole isn't actively bombed to the ground. "As long as I'm not homeless and starving, I don't care what my country's military institution seeks to do outside my borders - it's none of my fucking business".
I don't see this shit ending any differently. The Yanks had to give the regular folk of Japan a preview of hell before the militants were defeated politically. We'll probably have to do the same to unfuck Russia.
>Starvation by siege for Taiwan will have consequences of same proportions just as the nuclear option. The same logic of "yeah, we're not nuking you. We're just killing you all by famine." applies. There is no reason not to shoot for the dam - should Winnie play the military game as it's suggested.
No it's 100% not comparable at all. Again, don't get me wrong I think there would be international consequences one way or another in the event of a PLA invasion, especially if they opted for a campaign like this, however to say "Hey china, because your starving 25 million people, it's nuclear holocaust time and we are all going to die over this tiny island", like don't get me wrong, taiwan is important to the US and US foreign policy, but not that extreme and the Chinese know it. It's why I think a lot of the "experts" saying the US should pursue nuclear detterence to stop a taiwanese scenario from occurring are fucking retards, because Xi is just going to call that bluff.
It is. You're arguing from a strict US POV. For Taiwan, it is a bit of another question. Especially since it can't rely on the US being the ally they want. Especially if US response is instantly not breaking the blockade and going in hot - there is a good enough chance Taiwan will respond symmetrically.
Especially since both sides understand that it is a viable option for Taiwan, who's playing maximal escalation from day one.
Whether they will manage to have the means is another question.
>Whether they will manage to have the means is another question.
I mean taiwan successfully pulling something like that off even in a preemptive first strike would be a little questionable. It's going to be much more logical that a war between the two would start with a preemptive strike from the PLAs side, which could easily wipe out 90% of the ROCs mainland striking assets in like under a hour, and just absolutely demolish their command apparatus which would leave them unable to plan, coordinate, or execute such a mission for quite a while.
More to the point though, again, a attempted three gorges strike from taiwans side would serve absolutely no purpose even if they could do it. Like yah, it would do enormous damage to the PRC, but it wouldn't eliminate their nuclear triad or anything, and would result in Taipei just getting flattened by nukes by the days end.
Like if the Chinese standpoint on taiwan was "We are going to rape the women and eat the babies when we take over" then yah, mutually assured destruction could make sense for taiwan, but it's not and they legitimately see it as a "province of China" and the people as "future citizens". Like yah, it's probably not going to be great being Hong Kong 2.0, don't get me wrong (not a wumao swear to god) and if the taiwanese could preserve their full autonomy/independence that would probably be the best solution, but if the price is their own extinction then it's just objectively not worth it, and even discussing it as a practical option is a little bit silly.
It is good that war is terrible, lest we grow fond of it. If Taiwan is damned to perish from the follies of Maoists and their compliant subjects not objecting to that hunger plan, let them take hundreds of millions of Maoists along with them.
Justifiable use addressed, now comes the question of defeating Chinese EW. The key will be multiple redundant gyros to average out the accumulating error, midcourse astral navigation to correct that accumulated error (if we're flying high enough), terminal terrain matching navigation. Low-RCS re-entry vehicles with shit-ton of decoys (passive reflectors and active emitters). It can be done. Arguably, it must be done for the sake of credible deterrence and preclude that suicide pact of Maoists in the first place.
Honestly - with the state of Chinese dams (and frankly most dams built over the 20th century), it's a minor miracle of engineering they aren't failing catastrophically. A local Chinese folk with an axe to grind against state wrongdoing (plenty of them, for what that's worth), plenty of mining explosives, and a civil commercial vessel to be scuttled. Much more low-tech, all the same results. Worried about detection? Narco-subs. Not just submersibles - we can go full riverine submarine on this motherfucker.
>If Taiwan is damned to perish from the follies of Maoists and their compliant subjects not objecting to that hunger plan, let them take hundreds of millions of Maoists along with them.
I mean they wouldn't be is the thing. Like don't get me wrong taiwan is a fully functioning democracy while china is a police state autocracy, and a Chinese occupied taiwan would take that away, but it probably wouldnt be followed up by what's happening to the uyghurs or anything. The PRC sees the taiwanese people as "fellow citizens in need of liberation". If anything a occupied Taipei would likely just be a much more fucked up version of Hong Kong, which is like... yah, not desirable, but also not really worth "scorched earth" over.
>The key will be multiple redundant gyros to average out the accumulating error, midcourse astral navigation to correct that accumulated error (if we're flying high enough), terminal terrain matching navigation.
I mean, the JASSM already has INS, but the issue is drift is a really problem with that when your factoring in significant ranges. Like the JADM with INS only guidance has a CEP of around 30, and that's with a range of 70km max. A jassm with 10-20x the flight range it will be far worse. Like yah, maybe if you put enough gyros on I guess... but then your going to have to either reduce the warhead size or fuel capacity, which is going to effect the overall range and will make air platforms have to go through the more dense parts of the PLAs counter air complex before they can fire, which again is not desirable and defeats the purpose of the missile.
>. It can be done
I agree it can hypothetically be done, but the answer is by increasing munition package sizes. Like ew isn't a instakill or anything, effects your chances of getting through, but if you have good rng you can do it. Like in ukraine, 80-90% of the commerical fpv drones both sides are using are getting downed by ew (think UA is losing around 10k drones a month or something), however the 10% which get through have been a absolute menace for armor/artillery on both sides. So saturation is definitely possible of any IADS, it's just a matter of flinging enough stuff to ensure you can get through, which is something that will likely currently be pretty hard for the US, and will get more difficult year by year as the PLA's capabilities continue to mature and grow.
Great points. Honestly, it's basically a classical arms race with the end post of mutual annihilation through means other-than-nuclear. Pump enough time and resources on it and heaven and earth will be moved to that end.
Of all the above, I only have one thing I must object to.
>The PRC sees the taiwanese people as "fellow citizens in need of liberation"
So did katsaps w.r.t Ukrainians. How quick did Ukrainians went from "brotherly people" to "subhuman neo nazis" on Rossiya-1? Won't take much to convince the "new socialist man" that Taiwanese are irreversibly "Americanized" and now need to be exterminated to protect the body politic of "Chinese-ness"
It really depends. If China decides to take Taiwan because it wants the land, absolutely they would do what you say. However, that would guarantee the factories are completely useless.
If they want the factories intact their only shot is to try and blitz Taiwan, which is just not fucking happening.
> However, that would guarantee the factories are completely useless.
Yah, I agree, I think regardless of what they do, there is a decent probability that TSMCs infrastructure will be destroyed, even if neither side actually intends for that to happen.
However at the same time, I don't really think that matters because china's desire for taiwan is far bigger then "give us your weird ass sand factories", don't get me wrong, having that would obviously be a pretty nice bonus, but it's not going to necessarily stop them one way or the other. The main reason taiwan pursued the "silicon shield" in the first place is because they wanted to make themselves a critical national security asset of the US, and basically make protection as likely as possible. Even in 2024, that protection because of the semiconductors isn't necessarily guaranteed (though it definitely helps) but in 2034 when the US has a somewhar domestically adequate semiconductor industry because of the CHIP act and forcing TSMC to relocate, those strategic concerns will not be that relevant anymore.
You’re forgetting a very important issue, CCP-simp. [Taiwan has become “one of the most dangerous flashpoints” in the region as the US-China rivalry intensifies, Singapore Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong said on Friday.](https://scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/3263905/singapore-says-taiwan-one-most-dangerous-flashpoints-beijings-rivalry-us). Singaporeans can tell like it is. There’s a Washington/Beijing conflict. And it’s not going away in 10 years.
>There’s a Washington/Beijing conflict. And it’s not going away in 10 years.
I agree that a Washington/Beijing conflict is highly likely at some point in the future. I just don't know if it's going to be over taiwan or if it should be honestly.
Like I know your taiwanese, and I feel kinda bad for saying this, but America needs to be pragmatic about this (and frankly you guys as well), because the PRC is just never going to be. Current ccp foreign policy and "wolf warrior diplomacy" is less expansionist as much as it is irredentist. Like they spent the better half of the 19th century just getting absolutely shafted by western colonial powers, only to have them intervene at the end of your guys civil war right before they were going to win, and then have the absolute gaul to say "Hey why are you guys such imperialistic shitheads". It doesn't justify a invasion at all (you guys are a much better democracy which they probably won't be anytime soon), but to pretend this desire for "reunification" is just out of the blue, and will somehow "go away" is kinda ridiculous. At the same time though, thinking that China will just move onto Japan next afterwards like it's a hearts of iron game or something is also pretty dumb. China's desire is to be a much more fucked up version of the US, that's going to involve screwing over a lot of countries, but it's also going to involve interacting/working with them as opposed to a straight up conquest of them.
Again I think your nation should be protected if possible, and the US/west should work to curtail the CCPs ambitions as much as it can, but it needs to be strategic about it, and recognize what is and what isn't feasible.
A US-China war would [cause a instant US gdp drop of up to 10%](https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR1100/RR1140/RAND_RR1140.pdf), which would be something America hasnt experienced since the great depression. Similarly it would have a massive impact on a lot of other western countries, and especially those still developing in the southern and eastern hemisphere, and have become increasingly coopted by China through the belt and road initiative, which while definitely more parasitic then beneficial, has absolutely attached those nations at its hip and it could be catastrophic for them if that economic activity was just suddenly halted. Like famine level bad.
The point I'm trying to make is the US just cannot make the decision to go to war over taiwan lightly. Too much is on the line. It really should only make that decision provided it's confident of victory. Even in 2024 I don't think that's necesarilly guaranteed, and I especially don't think it will be in 2034 when the PLA will have developed the ability to dominate in not just the 1IC as they likely presently can, but the 2IC as well. At that point the odds of a US/Japanese victory in defending taiwan are just not very good, so choosing to do so anyway would be absolutely retarded if the consequences are high and you can't win. The global catastrophe which could ensue in the attempt to prevent you guys from becoming "Hong Kong 2.0" is in my opinion just not worth it, especially if it cannot actually be prevented regardless of whatever the US does, as cold as it is to say, just common sense really.
:) believe it or not. There’s [evidence in the past week and past two years of military exercises around Taiwan](https://chinapower.csis.org/china-respond-inauguration-taiwan-william-lai-joint-sword-2024a-military-exercise/) that shows Beijing is being pragmatic in keeping the conflict frozen.
It’s more so for their internal propaganda purposes.
>There’s evidence in the past week and past two years of military exercises around Taiwan that shows Beijing is being pragmatic in keeping the conflict frozen.
Yah I don't really know about that. That's kinda like saying "the DPP has no real interest in taiwanese independence, and it's just a platform so they can hold onto power", like yah, maybe that's true for some officials, but eventually it's very possible they will have to justify the agenda they have been working the better part of a century towards or miscalculate in a action somehow and inadvertently jumpstart a conflict.
I think a lot of actions they have been taking recently aren't so much directed at taiwan as they are at the US. Like they aren't building up area denial capabilities or offloading American debt and buying up on gold because they actually want to fight the US, they are more trying to challenge the dominance America might be able to display if they decided to move on taiwan, and basically make that a really stupid decision to go with.
I don't think its really possible for the US to absolutely guarantee taiwanese independence in the long run, however the best bet is probably maintaining strategic ambiguity in the event that the PRC is just bluffing and has no real interest of actually going in like you are saying. Of course that also requires the US to maintain really good readings on actual Chinese intentions/capabilities and be able to curtail the DPP from crossing any of Beijings "red lines", both of which are becoming increasing problems for Washington to do.
Pla doesnt have nearly enough standoff munitions to maintain a siege against the US and Allies. Their navy would attrit at horrible unsustainable rates trying to both defend the rest of China and break out into the Pacific to cover the Easern side of the island, only to get picked apart by subs once they do. Meanwhile their ability to keep the USN at arms length will rapidly decline to the point where they have to engage with ships and planes instead of ballistic missles and they will 100% lose that fight.
It's a deathtrap for the invader even more so. You're cowardice is bleeding through as well because despite people like you claiming "people will never fight if x happens" people the world over continue to fight to the death despite absolutely horrid conditions.
>Pla doesnt have nearly enough standoff munitions to maintain a siege against the US and Allies.
Nah they almost certainly do. [PLA naval aviation alone](https://imgur.com/a/peoples-liberation-army-naval-air-force-planaf-anti-ship-missile-salvo-volumes-provided-by-tempest-defense-analytics-UYk5Wzj) could potentially throw down close to 700 YJ83/YJ12s which could *absolutely demolish* both the 7th fleet and a good chunk of the JMSDF, even if you simmed a all hands on deck response and 100% interception rates. That number is also not even just a utter fucking fraction of the overall munitions thet will be able to generate, but also a fraction *of those types of platforms* they have (about 50% of their JH7s and maybe 20% of the H6 bombers in service with the PLAAF).
It's also important to keep in mind that the PLA does not plan on fighting the US or any other opponent "ship for ship" or "plane for plane" but rather their principal doctrines of [systems destruction ](https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1708.html) and [target centric warfare](https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA394-1.html) focus more on the operational/support infrastructure that sustain those systems. Like their idea or beating a F35 squadron isn't through a2a, but rather just cratering the hangar they are stationed out of or the fuel/weapons storage required for sorties. The goal is to maximize their fire potential, and do the most bang for their buck.
They have created not only a gigantic arsenal to aid them in this task, but a massive information/sensor network to identify targets, along [with massive support arms](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Liberation_Army_Information_Support_Force) aided by AI here and there.
The Chinese have a defense consultant/analytical infrastructure which is almost as big (if not bigger) then what the US has and is composed of nothing but nerds and math weenies who crunch the numbers and tell their brass how many munitions/platforms are needed for their goals and what type of force structure is desirable, and then they are actually listened to. The PLA has shown signs of being actually pretty pragmatic when it comes to countering the US in the region, which is a massive fucking problem.
>700 YJ83/YJ12s
These, based on their range, are not a true standoff weapon in modern naval usage since using it puts the user in range of air and missle response.
Chinas ballistic missles and their bigger cruise missles, which are their only real standoff weapons, aren't in a vacuum. They and their launchers will be enganged and attrited by airpower and submarines before the rest of the fleet even enters range. At which point It will 100% come down to ship for ship and plane for plane.
>It's also important to keep in mind that the PLA does not plan on fighting the US or any other opponent "ship for ship" or "plane for plane" but rather their principal doctrines of systems destruction and target centric warfare focus more on the operational/support infrastructure that sustain those systems.
Recent events in syria, Isreal, and Ukraine have shown that traditional missles much like strategic bombing before them are unreliable even before anti missle systems get involved and had their effectiveness vastly overestimated for years. They have proven unable to do more than temporarily supress infrastructure and be at most a nuisance. Russia had significantly larger stockpiles and was unable to reduce Ukrainian combat abilities by much using these missiles.The Chinese do not have enough at all to reduce US and Allies military capacity in the region.
China's entire strategy is flawed. It is based on sitting behind a magical ballistic missle screen that can somehow destroy all enemy military capability within range and throwing a shit ton of ancient and proven unreliable cruise missiles at the massed US fleet which won't be able to effectively return fire or preemptively strike due to "reasons" and praying to Mao the US gives up after sinking a fifth of their boats.
The US meanwhile is going to sit out in the pacific with room to manuaver and keep China bottled up in Chinese coastal waters while launching raids on China which China will not be able to effectively defend against since their targets aren't mobile and they have to cover their entire country while the US only has to cover it's fleet and bases.
The PLAAF is going to get a wake up call just like every other slavshit derived air force to engage the West in aerial combat in the last 50 years and after that the PLAAN is going to get it's shit kicked in while stuck in coastal waters and unable to manuaver. Meanwhile the PLARF will be sitting around with its thumb up it's ass waiting for a trickle of new missles after having expended all it's munitions on bases and infrastructure that has already been repaired.
The problem with sieging Taiwan down is that it takes time. Time the US can use to react, to gather its traditionally spread-out military, consolidate its regional allies and, ultimately, prepare a de-blockading operation. Obviously if Taiwan fights alone they're toast, but this entire time the implication was that they very much won't be alone. This imo is why PRC will try to take Taiwan with a coup de main style operation, a-la Ukraine, with massive amphibious and heliborne assaults on day one
>Time the US can use to react, to gather its traditionally spread-out military, consolidate its regional allies and, ultimately, prepare a de-blockading operation.
I mean yah, there are a bunch of different scenarios of what could happen, but it's generally believed the main strategy the PLA is preparing for is to divide their fires and hit the ROC and USFJ/Japan at the same time (as well as potentially ROK, but it's believed by a lot of analysts that they just aren't going to get involved, largely because of NK), with the overall goal being to just crater all forward american infrastructure up to like Guam, and divide and conquer. Deal with isolated and surprised regional coalition forces first, and then prepare for the 3rd fleet and whatever else the US/friends mobilize a few months down the line, while in the meantime the PLAAF bombs the shit out of both Taiwan and Japan.
>This imo is why PRC will try to take Taiwan with a coup de main style operation, a-la Ukraine, with massive amphibious and heliborne assaults on day one
I mean, the issue is just because they manage to take taiwan before a American response can materialize does not automatically rule that out from happening. Like could easily just go "thanks for stretching out your supply lines like that tards" and start hitting whatever logistical train the PLAGF/PAP have going to taiwan and start to squeeze them. Just adds a bunch of unnecessary operational risk which is not at all guaranteed to pay off. Because of that much better to play it slow and steady, and go with a approach where it's feasible for them to maintain operational/strategic surprise as that would be incredibly beneficial, and could not be accomplished if they mobilized 200k troops to try to cross the straight on day 1.
chop afterthought cover school library instinctive thought yam bewildered flag
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
>Tell Taiwan, they're the ones that said it.
Yah I get they said that lol, but that doesn't mean they are actually going to follow through with it was my point. Like yah, it's a smart thing to threaten to try to prevent a invasion, but provided one happens *anyway* it literally serves zero purpose to actually follow through with that threat, and will only serve to hurt them immensely.
The actual most valuable component of those fabs is the workforce. Any plan to scuttle them has to come with evacuation of the staff, resettle them in the USA and China will be truly afraid.
That aside, it doesn't take a nuclear explosion to destroy an E-UV lithography machine anyway.
A simple handgrenade would be more than sufficient to destroy all critical components beyond repair
In case anyone wants a credible comment. They could do literally nothing and the machine would be disabled. Without the manuals for operating it you can't do anything with them. They are INSANELY complex and delicate machines and probably have DRM running in every single part. They could switch it off remotely if the Chinese ever figured out how it worked.
If i remember correctly placeing your hand on the control panel can make them have problems
If they can have problems from that think what a granede would do
I visited the ASML factory in Veldhoven last year and they explained that a few dust particles can already disrupt the entire thing. The amount of precautions they have to take to make sure nothing goes wrong during and after installation is insane
Furþermore China wouldn't be able to develop ðeir own machines even if ðey capture one. Ðe reason for ðat is because ðe mirrors and optical lenses are made by Zeiss which is ðe only company in ðe world ðat can produce ðem. Since Zeiss is a German company, China won't get shit.
That's not slurring. English used to have letters for the voiced (ð) and the unvoiced (þ) dental fricatives, also known as the th sounds. Their use fell out of favor sometimes during the Middle English period. In Icelandic those letters are still used to this day in standard orthography, thus computer fonts often include them.
Th Chinese don’t have the people to operate the fabs, the US’s first priority should be evacuating the fab workers as that type of “tribal knowledge” is more important than the physical fabs. It can’t be replaced or duplicated
Those particular companies will be fine. They have the endurance to survive a few bad years and are hardly headquartered in China. They’ll just need to spend 3-4 years retooling elsewhere.
Harder, but TSMC itself doesn’t make everything it uses. It uses a lot of specialist equipment that comes from many super-specialised suppliers in the west. If China eats Taiwan and TSMC’s western inputs are severed, it’ll die, a vacuum will form where it is, and other companies on west aligned jurisdictions will fill the void. It’s not like intel, AMD, Nvidia don’t know how to push the envelope with their fabs.
Again, a few bad retooling years where our embedded equipment will be more expensive and advance slower than wend like, but ultimately nothing more than a road bump for us, while leaving China with nothing than a useless corpse on that end.
I thought TSMC foundries were built with explosives encased in the structure itself to prevent any tampering/attempts to disable them in the event that China tries to seize them?
A nuke seems overkill. These are some of the most precise and delicate machines on the planet, someone sneezing into the workings would Seriously mess the thing up. Set off a hand grenade near the delicate parts and the thing is scrap.
The only non-TSMC datacenter AI chip is Huawei Ascend 910B. So I guess the plan is to let Sam Altman spend his $7 trillion to buy out all the Ascend chips so that China would have no chip to train AI, since TSMC is destoryed and Ascend is bought out.
Is this in there own machine.
Or ones owned by mainland china. Because a serious question needs to be raised as to how many security holes are in Chinese systems.
Taiwan has already said the will blow up the factories before the let China capture them. But this is nice too.
Taiwan in all aspects is a small and remote country with little strategic importance. Except for tiny detail of holding 60% of semiconductor market. What Taiwan has is an economic equivalent of nuclear arsenal. In any practical time frame US have no other option but fight in case of Xi doing big funnier.
also a truly disgusting amount of the good tools people use to fix and build things are made in Taiwan
Universal rule: Made in China = Crap. Made in Taiwan = Good.
Taiwan. Numba. One.
China is asshoe!
https://youtu.be/cHf2qm-8I0Y?si=3thakcy9QVzxW48g
Taiwan is a strategic staging ground for the invasion of West Taiwan much like the UK in WW2.
That could be done through korea or Japan or any other us ally in the region
Disagree. Taiwan is the floodgate holding back the PLAN in the first island chain. If the island is lost, PRC submarines would enter the Pacific without the US having a chance to intercept them.
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Japan has also explicitly stated that if and when the war starts, they are all in.
“Accidentally” reclaim the Kuril Islands while there at it
Japan actually doesn't really have a choice to stay out of it anymore. The gap between China and Taiwan is like 110 miles, but the closest inhabited Japanese island, Yonaguni, is only 67 miles away from Taiwan. For decades, it was long assumed that Yonaguni would become part of an evacuation route for Taiwanese civilians in case of invasion. But in 2022, when China threw a ton of missiles at Taiwan as a warning after Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, a few of those missiles landed off the coast of Yonaguni instead. Japan was pretty angry about Chinese missiles landing in Japanese waters, but China responded by stating that they didn't recognize those as Japanese waters (way to dig yourself further into a hole, China). Basically, if China actually invades Taiwan, Japan will wind up taking collateral damage no matter if they enter the war or not. As a result, Japan has been moving missile defense systems and larger JSDF garrisons to Yonaguni.
China could abandon their submarine crews across all seven seas!
Taiwan is symbolically significant. The US has long held this as there line in the sand. That said the semi Conductor production is significant.
Why we let such important production centre be located next to China?
Honestly imo it's a good thing. Makes it so we can't have stupid idiots (in power) do the whole "US needs money, let them negotiate peace with the China" thing
I do not think that this is as much letting as it is that they are good at it and got rewarded for it.
No one "let" them do anything. Taiwan 100% backed the right industrial horse and is reaping the rewards.
Anthropic future selection. Here's how it works. It's possible to make A LOT of simulations. So most beings that see what we see are actually in ancestor simulations. Therefore, our observations are selected onto timelines where humanity survives. And one factor that makes humanity more likely to survive rouge AGI, putting most of the semiconductors somewhere they are likely to be bombed just before AGI becomes a thing, thus knocking back compute capacity at a key moment.
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How is this "openAI Advertizing"? "Our product could destroy the world, buy it now" is at least a somewhat unusual sales pitch. And there have been people concerned about one day AI being smart and malevolent and trying to destroy the world for a long time. I mean the general idea of animate creations turning against us dates back to at least Frankenstein. A more AI based view, at least back to the 1960's.
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I think that Current AI has some minor concerns associated with it. The standard misleading medical advice, deepfake porn etc. These aren't terribly huge problems, but some regulation is justified. In the 1990's there was a dot com bubble. This was a point where many people knew the internet would be important one day. But people hadn't quite worked out how, and the tech wasn't quite there yet. So people invested, hoping to be the first to invest in google or amazon. But a lot of those first wave companies failed, because the tech wasn't quite ready and/or they hadn't found the killer app. We are in a dot com bubble for AI. Current AI tech has impressive demos, but still has lots of oddities, bugs, limitations etc. If you want to make a compilation of fails, you can find plenty of 6 fingered hands. But the tech has gone from not existing at all, to kind of sometimes working in a few years. Progress in the field is pretty fast. There are theoretical arguments to suspect that future AI might be very dangerous at some point. Like kill all humans dangerous. This is something that quite a few prominent AI experts are concerned about. There is quite a bit of uncertainty about if/when such AI will arrive. This includes some short timelines. If "big wind turbine" argues that climate change is bad, and we should shut down coal power plants, this doesn't mean climate change doesn't exist. To determine the truth, you must stare directly at the tech itself. Not look at the companies PR and assume they are lying.
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Yes there exists a fake demo, made by openAI. There also exists a lot of impressive stuff that works. > these "experts" you most likely mean are a part of bizarre cult Would you include [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart\_J.\_Russell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_J._Russell) Stuart Russel, coauthor of the most popular textbook on AI to be part of this "cult" > harry potter fanfic writer, This sounds like a status attack. You think writing fanfic is low status. Issac Newton invented the catflap. But describing him as a "cat accessory inventor" isn't exactly a fair description. People have hobbies. And that includes writing. And some of that writing is fanfic. This is a group of people that like to discuss abstract , sometimes philosophical ideas. Roko came up with his basilisk. People looked at it. Mostly decided it was wrong, and abandoned it. That balilisk is used as a "look what these crazy people believe" far more than it is actually believed. The modern legal system will punish you for murder if you take some actions deliberately to kill someone, but if you take the same actions out of stupidity/carelessness then you will get a lesser sentence for manslaughter. Of course, this depends on the courts ability to guess what you were thinking, and given current limitations in brain scanning tech, this isn't perfect. Some people follow the heard, believing what everyone else believes. Some people are independent thinkers. When they are dumb, all the ideas they come up with are bad. When they are smart, they come up with some mixture of good and bad ideas. (Ie Newton had all sorts of nutty theology and alchemy ideas) Coming up with wild new ideas and yet being correct every time is REALLY hard. If there were complicated reasons to expect AI to be dangerous, and someone rather unusual came up with a bunch of them, what would you expect? A community of people very concerned about AI form around the ideas? Some things that cults do that communities and organizations don't. 1) Punish members for leaving/questioning the dogma. 2) Sleep deprivation and/or psychological abuse as part of indoctrination. 3) Encourage people to cut off all social contacts with friends/family. To the best of my knowledge, the lesswrong crowd doesn't do these things. I would prefer to talk technical arguments about AI rather than social arguments about what the people worried about AI are doing socially.
>Taiwan has already said the will blow up the factories before the let China capture them. They have said that, but whether or not they will actually do it is another thing altogether. TSMC is the heart of taiwans economy, so destroying it out of spite is just completely illogical and the equivalent of shooting themselves in the head post war, win or lose. Also a taiwan *with* it's fabs intact will be a lot more valuable to China then a taiwan *without it*, so if worse comes to worse and taiwan has to negotiate a surrender, still having those facilities around would give them a leg up in talks opposed to not having them around anymore. The US on the otherhand could choose to destroy them if it came down to it, partly just depends on when a war would happen. If it happened tomorrow, probably wouldnt be able to meet domestic needs without those fabs, so maybe not, if it happened 10 years from now when we will probably start to see the CHIP act yielding fruit, maybe, but the chances of the US intervening in a potential taiwan conflict will probably go down as well, so who knows.
This is a dead man switch. China will lose a lot of money/people/influence if they attack. It needs to be worth doing an amphibious landing on a country that spent the last 50 years preparing against that scenario. The chips factories are the thing that could balance everything out. If Taiwan is taken, but the semi conductor factories have been blown up, china just lost a fuckton of soldiers, boats, planes, and probably put under economic sanctions from all the people buying their shits. This would probably collapse their economy. The best defence is making yourself not worth invading.
>It needs to be worth doing an amphibious landing on a country that spent the last 50 years preparing against that scenario. The chips factories are the thing that could balance everything out No it really doesn't, a PLA invasion of taiwan will likely look nothing like D-Day if the Chinese actually have a brain and actually follow the exercises/DCT they have been doing. Yes amphibious landings are hard, but sieges aren't, and taiwan would be incredibly vulnerable to something like that. Taiwan imports 99% of it's energy ([have 90 days of mandatory storage](https://globaltaiwan.org/2023/09/securing-taiwans-black-gold-a-crude-analysis/) none of which is hardened), along with 70% of it's foodstuffs ([army war college has a pretty good writeup on this problem](https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol53/iss2/4/)). It's civil services are also highly vulnerable, whether that's powerplants, water filtration, sewage systems, or whatever else. In addition[the majority of taiwans fibreoptic cables run through the strait or around taiwan](https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2022/10/31/2003788016) and it would not be at all difficult for the Chinese to cut them, and pretty much completely cut off their internet/connection to the outside world. If the PLA applies the right pressure, in just a couple weeks taiwans situation could be absolutely catastrophic, with a first world nation in all respects just suddenly looking like Gaza, and having to deal with nightmare situations like starvation, cholera (cause no clean water), shit filled streets (cause no sewage system anymore), no electricity, no internet, rampant diseases, and whatever else. Are the taiwanese people going to fight to the death in this scenario huddled up in caves, or are they going to look at Hong Kong and go "huh, you know that uhh actually doesn't look that bad come to think of it". If the PLA actually needs to land, it's not going to be on day 1 against a prepared and at full strength ROC military, it's going to be against a completely hollowed out shell which has had the shit bombed out of it for several weeks/months straight and probably will not be able to offer up that much resistance. Again though, they might not even need to do that, all that really has to happen is for the PLA to destroy its C2/C3/C4 nodes and critical military infrastructure (which can probably be done pretty quickly) at which point most coordination will be lost and whatever they manage to preserve will likely not be that much of a threat. Kinda why "hedgehog defense" is stupid imo, doesn't matter how many missiles you have if you don't have any kind of proper integrated defense to accurately cue/aquire targets. If taiwan can't do that they will be blindly flinging missiles like the houthis or Serbs really fucking quickly. tldr: taiwan isnt a fortress, it's a fucking deathtrap.
Two can play at that game. If the Maoists siege Taiwan, we blow the dams. Hundreds of millions perish. If China wants to turn Taiwan into a death trap, congratulations. China also built their own death traps. A dose of counter-terror terror will sort them out.
>we blow the dams. Hundreds of millions perish. For one, whether or not a deep strike air campaign will be feasible over china is questionable at this point. Even the more neoconservative CSIS wargames were kinda on the fence about it, and that's even after they nerfed the fuck outta Chinese ew capabilities (I'm sorry, but a 1,000km+ missile will likely encounter some level of transient drift if it's going to be in a heavy ecm environment the whole way, regardless of it's RCF package) Secondly even if a three gorges strike was successful and could be done, that would be nuclear escalation lmao. It wouldn't be "Bro, 400 million of your people are now underwater, but you have a no first use policy bro, so you can't use your nukes!!!!". Like it's a funny joke, but it's been circlejerked so much here that people have started to believe it's a legitimately credible option.
For Taiwan, using the quasi-nuclear option is not as non-credible as you suggest. Starvation by siege for Taiwan will have consequences of same proportions just as the nuclear option. The same logic of "yeah, we're not nuking you. We're just killing you all by famine." applies. There is no reason not to shoot for the dam - should Winnie play the military game as it's suggested. Add-it: I know that for the USA, the struggle will seem important, but its existence will not be on the line. For Taiwan, its existence in its current form will be over before the first PLA guy sets foot on the island....
> same logic of "yeah, we're not nuking you. We're just killing you all by famine." applies everytime some greenhorn (understandble, we all gotta learn) or tankie (fuck'em) cries about the Yanks dropping the sun on Japan, remind them the firebombings killed and made homeless orders of magnitude more civilians. Their response tells you everything you need to know about which ones we're talking to.
The power of nuclear weapons is that we can do it with one bomb. Before that, every other major Japanese city had enjoyed visits from 500+ planes. There wasn't much left to bomb.
1930s Japan is the same shit we're witnessing in Russia right now. A society gripped by militant philistinism. Utter indifference to fellow man as long as the metropole isn't actively bombed to the ground. "As long as I'm not homeless and starving, I don't care what my country's military institution seeks to do outside my borders - it's none of my fucking business". I don't see this shit ending any differently. The Yanks had to give the regular folk of Japan a preview of hell before the militants were defeated politically. We'll probably have to do the same to unfuck Russia.
>Starvation by siege for Taiwan will have consequences of same proportions just as the nuclear option. The same logic of "yeah, we're not nuking you. We're just killing you all by famine." applies. There is no reason not to shoot for the dam - should Winnie play the military game as it's suggested. No it's 100% not comparable at all. Again, don't get me wrong I think there would be international consequences one way or another in the event of a PLA invasion, especially if they opted for a campaign like this, however to say "Hey china, because your starving 25 million people, it's nuclear holocaust time and we are all going to die over this tiny island", like don't get me wrong, taiwan is important to the US and US foreign policy, but not that extreme and the Chinese know it. It's why I think a lot of the "experts" saying the US should pursue nuclear detterence to stop a taiwanese scenario from occurring are fucking retards, because Xi is just going to call that bluff.
It is. You're arguing from a strict US POV. For Taiwan, it is a bit of another question. Especially since it can't rely on the US being the ally they want. Especially if US response is instantly not breaking the blockade and going in hot - there is a good enough chance Taiwan will respond symmetrically. Especially since both sides understand that it is a viable option for Taiwan, who's playing maximal escalation from day one. Whether they will manage to have the means is another question.
>Whether they will manage to have the means is another question. I mean taiwan successfully pulling something like that off even in a preemptive first strike would be a little questionable. It's going to be much more logical that a war between the two would start with a preemptive strike from the PLAs side, which could easily wipe out 90% of the ROCs mainland striking assets in like under a hour, and just absolutely demolish their command apparatus which would leave them unable to plan, coordinate, or execute such a mission for quite a while. More to the point though, again, a attempted three gorges strike from taiwans side would serve absolutely no purpose even if they could do it. Like yah, it would do enormous damage to the PRC, but it wouldn't eliminate their nuclear triad or anything, and would result in Taipei just getting flattened by nukes by the days end. Like if the Chinese standpoint on taiwan was "We are going to rape the women and eat the babies when we take over" then yah, mutually assured destruction could make sense for taiwan, but it's not and they legitimately see it as a "province of China" and the people as "future citizens". Like yah, it's probably not going to be great being Hong Kong 2.0, don't get me wrong (not a wumao swear to god) and if the taiwanese could preserve their full autonomy/independence that would probably be the best solution, but if the price is their own extinction then it's just objectively not worth it, and even discussing it as a practical option is a little bit silly.
It is good that war is terrible, lest we grow fond of it. If Taiwan is damned to perish from the follies of Maoists and their compliant subjects not objecting to that hunger plan, let them take hundreds of millions of Maoists along with them. Justifiable use addressed, now comes the question of defeating Chinese EW. The key will be multiple redundant gyros to average out the accumulating error, midcourse astral navigation to correct that accumulated error (if we're flying high enough), terminal terrain matching navigation. Low-RCS re-entry vehicles with shit-ton of decoys (passive reflectors and active emitters). It can be done. Arguably, it must be done for the sake of credible deterrence and preclude that suicide pact of Maoists in the first place. Honestly - with the state of Chinese dams (and frankly most dams built over the 20th century), it's a minor miracle of engineering they aren't failing catastrophically. A local Chinese folk with an axe to grind against state wrongdoing (plenty of them, for what that's worth), plenty of mining explosives, and a civil commercial vessel to be scuttled. Much more low-tech, all the same results. Worried about detection? Narco-subs. Not just submersibles - we can go full riverine submarine on this motherfucker.
>If Taiwan is damned to perish from the follies of Maoists and their compliant subjects not objecting to that hunger plan, let them take hundreds of millions of Maoists along with them. I mean they wouldn't be is the thing. Like don't get me wrong taiwan is a fully functioning democracy while china is a police state autocracy, and a Chinese occupied taiwan would take that away, but it probably wouldnt be followed up by what's happening to the uyghurs or anything. The PRC sees the taiwanese people as "fellow citizens in need of liberation". If anything a occupied Taipei would likely just be a much more fucked up version of Hong Kong, which is like... yah, not desirable, but also not really worth "scorched earth" over. >The key will be multiple redundant gyros to average out the accumulating error, midcourse astral navigation to correct that accumulated error (if we're flying high enough), terminal terrain matching navigation. I mean, the JASSM already has INS, but the issue is drift is a really problem with that when your factoring in significant ranges. Like the JADM with INS only guidance has a CEP of around 30, and that's with a range of 70km max. A jassm with 10-20x the flight range it will be far worse. Like yah, maybe if you put enough gyros on I guess... but then your going to have to either reduce the warhead size or fuel capacity, which is going to effect the overall range and will make air platforms have to go through the more dense parts of the PLAs counter air complex before they can fire, which again is not desirable and defeats the purpose of the missile. >. It can be done I agree it can hypothetically be done, but the answer is by increasing munition package sizes. Like ew isn't a instakill or anything, effects your chances of getting through, but if you have good rng you can do it. Like in ukraine, 80-90% of the commerical fpv drones both sides are using are getting downed by ew (think UA is losing around 10k drones a month or something), however the 10% which get through have been a absolute menace for armor/artillery on both sides. So saturation is definitely possible of any IADS, it's just a matter of flinging enough stuff to ensure you can get through, which is something that will likely currently be pretty hard for the US, and will get more difficult year by year as the PLA's capabilities continue to mature and grow.
Great points. Honestly, it's basically a classical arms race with the end post of mutual annihilation through means other-than-nuclear. Pump enough time and resources on it and heaven and earth will be moved to that end. Of all the above, I only have one thing I must object to. >The PRC sees the taiwanese people as "fellow citizens in need of liberation" So did katsaps w.r.t Ukrainians. How quick did Ukrainians went from "brotherly people" to "subhuman neo nazis" on Rossiya-1? Won't take much to convince the "new socialist man" that Taiwanese are irreversibly "Americanized" and now need to be exterminated to protect the body politic of "Chinese-ness"
I thought you were saying if the quality of the dam matches the quality of the stuff they ship over here, a local could take it out with an axe.
Oh no, it's just that dams are getting old everywhere.
It really depends. If China decides to take Taiwan because it wants the land, absolutely they would do what you say. However, that would guarantee the factories are completely useless. If they want the factories intact their only shot is to try and blitz Taiwan, which is just not fucking happening.
> However, that would guarantee the factories are completely useless. Yah, I agree, I think regardless of what they do, there is a decent probability that TSMCs infrastructure will be destroyed, even if neither side actually intends for that to happen. However at the same time, I don't really think that matters because china's desire for taiwan is far bigger then "give us your weird ass sand factories", don't get me wrong, having that would obviously be a pretty nice bonus, but it's not going to necessarily stop them one way or the other. The main reason taiwan pursued the "silicon shield" in the first place is because they wanted to make themselves a critical national security asset of the US, and basically make protection as likely as possible. Even in 2024, that protection because of the semiconductors isn't necessarily guaranteed (though it definitely helps) but in 2034 when the US has a somewhar domestically adequate semiconductor industry because of the CHIP act and forcing TSMC to relocate, those strategic concerns will not be that relevant anymore.
You’re forgetting a very important issue, CCP-simp. [Taiwan has become “one of the most dangerous flashpoints” in the region as the US-China rivalry intensifies, Singapore Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong said on Friday.](https://scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/3263905/singapore-says-taiwan-one-most-dangerous-flashpoints-beijings-rivalry-us). Singaporeans can tell like it is. There’s a Washington/Beijing conflict. And it’s not going away in 10 years.
Imho, for a Singaporean DPM to give that speech in Tokyo, I reckon they are none too pleased.
>There’s a Washington/Beijing conflict. And it’s not going away in 10 years. I agree that a Washington/Beijing conflict is highly likely at some point in the future. I just don't know if it's going to be over taiwan or if it should be honestly. Like I know your taiwanese, and I feel kinda bad for saying this, but America needs to be pragmatic about this (and frankly you guys as well), because the PRC is just never going to be. Current ccp foreign policy and "wolf warrior diplomacy" is less expansionist as much as it is irredentist. Like they spent the better half of the 19th century just getting absolutely shafted by western colonial powers, only to have them intervene at the end of your guys civil war right before they were going to win, and then have the absolute gaul to say "Hey why are you guys such imperialistic shitheads". It doesn't justify a invasion at all (you guys are a much better democracy which they probably won't be anytime soon), but to pretend this desire for "reunification" is just out of the blue, and will somehow "go away" is kinda ridiculous. At the same time though, thinking that China will just move onto Japan next afterwards like it's a hearts of iron game or something is also pretty dumb. China's desire is to be a much more fucked up version of the US, that's going to involve screwing over a lot of countries, but it's also going to involve interacting/working with them as opposed to a straight up conquest of them. Again I think your nation should be protected if possible, and the US/west should work to curtail the CCPs ambitions as much as it can, but it needs to be strategic about it, and recognize what is and what isn't feasible. A US-China war would [cause a instant US gdp drop of up to 10%](https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR1100/RR1140/RAND_RR1140.pdf), which would be something America hasnt experienced since the great depression. Similarly it would have a massive impact on a lot of other western countries, and especially those still developing in the southern and eastern hemisphere, and have become increasingly coopted by China through the belt and road initiative, which while definitely more parasitic then beneficial, has absolutely attached those nations at its hip and it could be catastrophic for them if that economic activity was just suddenly halted. Like famine level bad. The point I'm trying to make is the US just cannot make the decision to go to war over taiwan lightly. Too much is on the line. It really should only make that decision provided it's confident of victory. Even in 2024 I don't think that's necesarilly guaranteed, and I especially don't think it will be in 2034 when the PLA will have developed the ability to dominate in not just the 1IC as they likely presently can, but the 2IC as well. At that point the odds of a US/Japanese victory in defending taiwan are just not very good, so choosing to do so anyway would be absolutely retarded if the consequences are high and you can't win. The global catastrophe which could ensue in the attempt to prevent you guys from becoming "Hong Kong 2.0" is in my opinion just not worth it, especially if it cannot actually be prevented regardless of whatever the US does, as cold as it is to say, just common sense really.
:) believe it or not. There’s [evidence in the past week and past two years of military exercises around Taiwan](https://chinapower.csis.org/china-respond-inauguration-taiwan-william-lai-joint-sword-2024a-military-exercise/) that shows Beijing is being pragmatic in keeping the conflict frozen. It’s more so for their internal propaganda purposes.
>There’s evidence in the past week and past two years of military exercises around Taiwan that shows Beijing is being pragmatic in keeping the conflict frozen. Yah I don't really know about that. That's kinda like saying "the DPP has no real interest in taiwanese independence, and it's just a platform so they can hold onto power", like yah, maybe that's true for some officials, but eventually it's very possible they will have to justify the agenda they have been working the better part of a century towards or miscalculate in a action somehow and inadvertently jumpstart a conflict. I think a lot of actions they have been taking recently aren't so much directed at taiwan as they are at the US. Like they aren't building up area denial capabilities or offloading American debt and buying up on gold because they actually want to fight the US, they are more trying to challenge the dominance America might be able to display if they decided to move on taiwan, and basically make that a really stupid decision to go with. I don't think its really possible for the US to absolutely guarantee taiwanese independence in the long run, however the best bet is probably maintaining strategic ambiguity in the event that the PRC is just bluffing and has no real interest of actually going in like you are saying. Of course that also requires the US to maintain really good readings on actual Chinese intentions/capabilities and be able to curtail the DPP from crossing any of Beijings "red lines", both of which are becoming increasing problems for Washington to do.
Pla doesnt have nearly enough standoff munitions to maintain a siege against the US and Allies. Their navy would attrit at horrible unsustainable rates trying to both defend the rest of China and break out into the Pacific to cover the Easern side of the island, only to get picked apart by subs once they do. Meanwhile their ability to keep the USN at arms length will rapidly decline to the point where they have to engage with ships and planes instead of ballistic missles and they will 100% lose that fight. It's a deathtrap for the invader even more so. You're cowardice is bleeding through as well because despite people like you claiming "people will never fight if x happens" people the world over continue to fight to the death despite absolutely horrid conditions.
>Pla doesnt have nearly enough standoff munitions to maintain a siege against the US and Allies. Nah they almost certainly do. [PLA naval aviation alone](https://imgur.com/a/peoples-liberation-army-naval-air-force-planaf-anti-ship-missile-salvo-volumes-provided-by-tempest-defense-analytics-UYk5Wzj) could potentially throw down close to 700 YJ83/YJ12s which could *absolutely demolish* both the 7th fleet and a good chunk of the JMSDF, even if you simmed a all hands on deck response and 100% interception rates. That number is also not even just a utter fucking fraction of the overall munitions thet will be able to generate, but also a fraction *of those types of platforms* they have (about 50% of their JH7s and maybe 20% of the H6 bombers in service with the PLAAF). It's also important to keep in mind that the PLA does not plan on fighting the US or any other opponent "ship for ship" or "plane for plane" but rather their principal doctrines of [systems destruction ](https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1708.html) and [target centric warfare](https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA394-1.html) focus more on the operational/support infrastructure that sustain those systems. Like their idea or beating a F35 squadron isn't through a2a, but rather just cratering the hangar they are stationed out of or the fuel/weapons storage required for sorties. The goal is to maximize their fire potential, and do the most bang for their buck. They have created not only a gigantic arsenal to aid them in this task, but a massive information/sensor network to identify targets, along [with massive support arms](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Liberation_Army_Information_Support_Force) aided by AI here and there. The Chinese have a defense consultant/analytical infrastructure which is almost as big (if not bigger) then what the US has and is composed of nothing but nerds and math weenies who crunch the numbers and tell their brass how many munitions/platforms are needed for their goals and what type of force structure is desirable, and then they are actually listened to. The PLA has shown signs of being actually pretty pragmatic when it comes to countering the US in the region, which is a massive fucking problem.
>700 YJ83/YJ12s These, based on their range, are not a true standoff weapon in modern naval usage since using it puts the user in range of air and missle response. Chinas ballistic missles and their bigger cruise missles, which are their only real standoff weapons, aren't in a vacuum. They and their launchers will be enganged and attrited by airpower and submarines before the rest of the fleet even enters range. At which point It will 100% come down to ship for ship and plane for plane. >It's also important to keep in mind that the PLA does not plan on fighting the US or any other opponent "ship for ship" or "plane for plane" but rather their principal doctrines of systems destruction and target centric warfare focus more on the operational/support infrastructure that sustain those systems. Recent events in syria, Isreal, and Ukraine have shown that traditional missles much like strategic bombing before them are unreliable even before anti missle systems get involved and had their effectiveness vastly overestimated for years. They have proven unable to do more than temporarily supress infrastructure and be at most a nuisance. Russia had significantly larger stockpiles and was unable to reduce Ukrainian combat abilities by much using these missiles.The Chinese do not have enough at all to reduce US and Allies military capacity in the region. China's entire strategy is flawed. It is based on sitting behind a magical ballistic missle screen that can somehow destroy all enemy military capability within range and throwing a shit ton of ancient and proven unreliable cruise missiles at the massed US fleet which won't be able to effectively return fire or preemptively strike due to "reasons" and praying to Mao the US gives up after sinking a fifth of their boats. The US meanwhile is going to sit out in the pacific with room to manuaver and keep China bottled up in Chinese coastal waters while launching raids on China which China will not be able to effectively defend against since their targets aren't mobile and they have to cover their entire country while the US only has to cover it's fleet and bases. The PLAAF is going to get a wake up call just like every other slavshit derived air force to engage the West in aerial combat in the last 50 years and after that the PLAAN is going to get it's shit kicked in while stuck in coastal waters and unable to manuaver. Meanwhile the PLARF will be sitting around with its thumb up it's ass waiting for a trickle of new missles after having expended all it's munitions on bases and infrastructure that has already been repaired.
The problem with sieging Taiwan down is that it takes time. Time the US can use to react, to gather its traditionally spread-out military, consolidate its regional allies and, ultimately, prepare a de-blockading operation. Obviously if Taiwan fights alone they're toast, but this entire time the implication was that they very much won't be alone. This imo is why PRC will try to take Taiwan with a coup de main style operation, a-la Ukraine, with massive amphibious and heliborne assaults on day one
>Time the US can use to react, to gather its traditionally spread-out military, consolidate its regional allies and, ultimately, prepare a de-blockading operation. I mean yah, there are a bunch of different scenarios of what could happen, but it's generally believed the main strategy the PLA is preparing for is to divide their fires and hit the ROC and USFJ/Japan at the same time (as well as potentially ROK, but it's believed by a lot of analysts that they just aren't going to get involved, largely because of NK), with the overall goal being to just crater all forward american infrastructure up to like Guam, and divide and conquer. Deal with isolated and surprised regional coalition forces first, and then prepare for the 3rd fleet and whatever else the US/friends mobilize a few months down the line, while in the meantime the PLAAF bombs the shit out of both Taiwan and Japan. >This imo is why PRC will try to take Taiwan with a coup de main style operation, a-la Ukraine, with massive amphibious and heliborne assaults on day one I mean, the issue is just because they manage to take taiwan before a American response can materialize does not automatically rule that out from happening. Like could easily just go "thanks for stretching out your supply lines like that tards" and start hitting whatever logistical train the PLAGF/PAP have going to taiwan and start to squeeze them. Just adds a bunch of unnecessary operational risk which is not at all guaranteed to pay off. Because of that much better to play it slow and steady, and go with a approach where it's feasible for them to maintain operational/strategic surprise as that would be incredibly beneficial, and could not be accomplished if they mobilized 200k troops to try to cross the straight on day 1.
chop afterthought cover school library instinctive thought yam bewildered flag *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Tell Taiwan, they're the ones that said it.
>Tell Taiwan, they're the ones that said it. Yah I get they said that lol, but that doesn't mean they are actually going to follow through with it was my point. Like yah, it's a smart thing to threaten to try to prevent a invasion, but provided one happens *anyway* it literally serves zero purpose to actually follow through with that threat, and will only serve to hurt them immensely.
Whatever you say, Prime Minister Chamberlain.
The actual most valuable component of those fabs is the workforce. Any plan to scuttle them has to come with evacuation of the staff, resettle them in the USA and China will be truly afraid.
That aside, it doesn't take a nuclear explosion to destroy an E-UV lithography machine anyway. A simple handgrenade would be more than sufficient to destroy all critical components beyond repair
Cute killswitch, but ultimately unnecessary You might not know this. But our chip machines actually double as Gundams in case of emergencies
I fucking knew it!
In case anyone wants a credible comment. They could do literally nothing and the machine would be disabled. Without the manuals for operating it you can't do anything with them. They are INSANELY complex and delicate machines and probably have DRM running in every single part. They could switch it off remotely if the Chinese ever figured out how it worked.
If i remember correctly placeing your hand on the control panel can make them have problems If they can have problems from that think what a granede would do
I visited the ASML factory in Veldhoven last year and they explained that a few dust particles can already disrupt the entire thing. The amount of precautions they have to take to make sure nothing goes wrong during and after installation is insane
Furþermore China wouldn't be able to develop ðeir own machines even if ðey capture one. Ðe reason for ðat is because ðe mirrors and optical lenses are made by Zeiss which is ðe only company in ðe world ðat can produce ðem. Since Zeiss is a German company, China won't get shit.
Sir you are slurring some of your words. Please report to the company doctor immediately it might be contagious.
That's not slurring. English used to have letters for the voiced (ð) and the unvoiced (þ) dental fricatives, also known as the th sounds. Their use fell out of favor sometimes during the Middle English period. In Icelandic those letters are still used to this day in standard orthography, thus computer fonts often include them.
Oh lord he’s delirious too. Medic!
Þat's ridiculous. I'm perfectly healþy. Ðe reports about radiation-induced nerve damage are lies and should be dismissed.
Oh, so like combat airframes but a thousand times more sensitive to abuse. Fuck a killswitch, negligence and lack of support is the killswitch.
Th Chinese don’t have the people to operate the fabs, the US’s first priority should be evacuating the fab workers as that type of “tribal knowledge” is more important than the physical fabs. It can’t be replaced or duplicated
Needs a Saddam for scale.
But where does Saddam go?
He is actually a vital component. Without it the machine can only produce 32 bit chips at the highest.
He's in the big white box on the bottom middle
Wait, does this mean I get to play **Fallout: New Taipei**... for free?!?!
No Taiwan=No Nvidia/apple(and other big us kompani). Therefore, No Taiwan=no big corporations to mock Europoors.
Those particular companies will be fine. They have the endurance to survive a few bad years and are hardly headquartered in China. They’ll just need to spend 3-4 years retooling elsewhere.
Eh, but semiconducter ? Doesn't that take big time ?
Harder, but TSMC itself doesn’t make everything it uses. It uses a lot of specialist equipment that comes from many super-specialised suppliers in the west. If China eats Taiwan and TSMC’s western inputs are severed, it’ll die, a vacuum will form where it is, and other companies on west aligned jurisdictions will fill the void. It’s not like intel, AMD, Nvidia don’t know how to push the envelope with their fabs. Again, a few bad retooling years where our embedded equipment will be more expensive and advance slower than wend like, but ultimately nothing more than a road bump for us, while leaving China with nothing than a useless corpse on that end.
It's preferable to China ever being competitive.
I thought TSMC foundries were built with explosives encased in the structure itself to prevent any tampering/attempts to disable them in the event that China tries to seize them?
"All units be advised, the on-site nuclear device has been armed and the countdown has begun"
Now if we can only get Beijing and Moscow to also fund that suitcase…
3000 Funni Vending Machines of Taiwan
A nuke seems overkill. These are some of the most precise and delicate machines on the planet, someone sneezing into the workings would Seriously mess the thing up. Set off a hand grenade near the delicate parts and the thing is scrap.
The only non-TSMC datacenter AI chip is Huawei Ascend 910B. So I guess the plan is to let Sam Altman spend his $7 trillion to buy out all the Ascend chips so that China would have no chip to train AI, since TSMC is destoryed and Ascend is bought out.
Lisa Su got the button to blow up all the fabs she's buyin' chips from in her home office in Cali or wherever.
Is this in there own machine. Or ones owned by mainland china. Because a serious question needs to be raised as to how many security holes are in Chinese systems.