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Comment by microcolonel | Hacker News Reader

I've been told that they have a contingency for this, that much of the design collateral is literally rigged for destruction.

And I'm inclined to believe it: TSMC guaranteeing that PRC would fail to capitalize on their assets if they invaded Taiwan is a primary national security concern for the Republic of China.

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Seems quite risky to have anything "rigged" for destruction. What I find way more believable is that Taiwanese military has exact coordinates of the critical parts of the plant for the artillery to hit it immediately when needed. Perhaps even plans how to properly rig it for demolition but I am always highly skeptical of anything being rigged with explosives on a normal basis, seems like such a high risk to take.

I think such a system is not necessarily risky if the detonators are not installed. Installing the detonators at the last minute could be done more rapidly than moving/installing all the requisite explosives.

On the other hand, perhaps there are other ways to destroy a silicon fab than explosives?

Smoke bombs or similar in the clean rooms would probably be a good start

It seems believable to me. I've heard some other countries (South Korea, and Switzerland maybe?) have/had bridges rigged to blow up or mountain passes rigged to be blocked by massive concrete structures above them.

In Germany certain bridges were also rigged with explosives during the cold war. But they have since been removed.

North of Sydney, Australia, there is a 1.69km (just over 1 mile) long railway tunnel on the main northern railway line called the Woy Woy Tunnel.

During WW2, a short additional tunnel was dug above the tunnel entrance, to be filled with explosives in order to blow it up. This was so that if Japan invaded, the Japanese military would not be able to use the railway line to help them invade Sydney. The feared Japanese land invasion never came, the explosives were never detonated, but the tunnel dug for the explosives is still there today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Interior_of_World_War_2_d... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Interior_of_World_War_2_d...

Stay-behind[0] operations such as Operation Gladio[1] were common in western Europe during the Cold War.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Taiwan has a similar setup in place.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stay-behind [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio

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