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Comment by 11thEarlOfMar | Hacker News Reader

A major incentive for the US government to get involved is touched on. Not only is Taiwan 'just off the coast' from China, China is coming for it and intends to assimilate Taiwan back into China just as Hong Kong and Macau have been.

At that point, the only sustainable leverage the rest of the world would have in chip technology would be ASML.

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It is thought provoking to think that the USA's interest in Taiwan is more about protecting TMSC than protecting a democratic state in East Asia. By this line of thinking, building capacity in Arizona, or anywhere outside Taiwan, is good for TMSC and for the USA but weakens Taiwan.

> It is thought provoking to think that the USA's interest in Taiwan is more about protecting TMSC than protecting a democratic state in East Asia.

Why it though provoking? It's always realpolitik. All wars are.

There's always a pretext but the subtext is what actually causes wars.

Taiwan is also stategically important because it guards access from the Pacific to China and back. To the north there is Japan and South Korea (US allies), and to the south there are Vietnam and the Philippines, who already feel the pressure of the expansion of China's influence (Chinese military bases in the South China sea), and are thus likely to side with the US in the future. Right now, China is sorta contained, but if the CCP can reassert itself on Taiwan, the situation will flip and the CCP will have full control about access to the mainland from the sea, and can freely access the Pacific.

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