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Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

I don’t think the terrorist threat is likely. It would have to be on the scale of 30 simultaneous 9/11 attacks. Anything less would just be a temporary inconvenience, 3.5% for a month is only 0.3% of annual production.

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Also, a group capable of 30 simultaneous infrastructure attacks anywhere in the world with the goal of disrupting civilization can easily find far better targets than chip fabs, and various intelligence agencies will have infiltrated such a large international group anyway. The notion is interesting but unrealistic.

What thirty targets with similar security as chip fabs do you have in mind? I have a hard time coming up with anything other than nuclear plants for massive damage, but they have somewhat stricter access control, I hope. Oil pipelines are much quicker to repair and most countries have strategic reserves. Refineries maybe?

What about critical infrastructure? Dams which could flood big areas are one example which would be absolutely destructive

I don't think flooding one area is on the same level as killing a large part of microchip production for a couple of years. Almost everything has a chip inside these days.

Liquified natural gas depots. Igniting one of these or a full LNG ship in the river or bay near population centers would kill tens of thousands and the fire could not be extinguished, we would have to let it run its course. Nuclear plants have a bit more security than a chip plant and the logistics of damage by nuclear plant takeover kind of require the authorities to do nothing for a long time.

Terrorists are a simple-to-state example of the problem, but if that doesn't sound convincing, remember that most (or all?) of these fabs are in a region dominated by a superpower that is moving towards dictatorial authority [1], and additionally, that this region is also (one of the many) moving towards a pattern of extreme weather events [2]. There are many possible events that could seriously disrupt such a concentrated industrial base, and only one would have to happen to cause problems.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/17/china-reappoin... [2] https://phys.org/news/2017-02-china-severe-weather-patterns-...

well, except 9/11 happened so things can happen that the world's intelligence agencies don't know about. China or the us or russia or a few other countries could just send out missiles in 5 minutes and accomplish this. so just assume idiots or madmen don't get in charge of countries. And it already happened.

Superpowers with huge Arsenal’s could do massive damage. I don’t think this is news to anyone though.

> various intelligence agencies will have infiltrated such a large international group anyway

But will those organizations get in each other’s way and thus cause us to not stop it in advance. Watch or read The Looming Tower for more context. I’m not sure we really learned our lesson for that one.

I think a more realistic (and worrisome) scenario is war brekaing out in South East Asia. Fabs should be clear economic targets for opposing forces. There are a number of conflicts which would likely lead to severe disruption on global semiconductor market.

If the Korean War restarts (which is less likely than people think, but still more likely than simultaneous terrorist attacks), the world is likely to lose most South Korean export products for a period.

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