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Comment by dragontamer | Hacker News Reader

Taiwan is a great ally. But if a war breaks out between US and China, Taiwan will likely be the first casualty.

Nothing against Taiwan or anything. Its just the bloody obvious "first strike" move. China will almost certainly attack Taiwan as part of an offensive-strategy vs the USA.

Having fabs on this side of the Pacific Ocean is important for strategic defense reasons. Of course, the US should move to defend Taiwan in that situation, but if worst-comes-to-worst, we'll need a way to produce chips under such a scenario.

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This story is about Samsung however, which is South Korean. North Korea now has nuclear weapons, as well as tons of artillery pointing at South Korea.

For the Samsung-side of things: same thing. South Korea are great allies, but if the North Korean war ever gets started again, Samsung's production inside the US-proper would be a strategic advantage.

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True. It's also important to remember that Taiwan is located in a seismically active region ...

> Taiwan is a great ally.

Should I remind of the fact that Taiwan was very glad to sell any amount of semiconductors to mainland China.

If anybody had an option to strangle them economically, it would've been Taiwanese themselves.

China is world's biggest semiconductor market. If the tap will close on their semiconductor imports, so would've their economy at large.

Now, it's them, and not US who has to regret their prior indecisiveness the most.

Now of course attitudes have changed in Taipei, but only now.

I bet, in the next 5-10 years, Japan, and Korea will have their own time regretting being soft with Beijing just like that.

> Should I remind of the fact that Taiwan was very glad to sell any amount of semiconductors to mainland China.

And US companies moved production to China. Apple, TSLA, etc. etc. Yeah, we're in peacetime. These things happen. We're not planning to go to war with China, but we need to be realistic about potential threats in the future.

There's something to be said about the ability for trade to reduce tensions. I don't think trade with China is necessarily bad.

> Should I remind of the fact that Taiwan was very glad to sell any amount of semiconductors to mainland China.

> If anybody had an option to strangle them economically, it would've been Taiwanese themselves

> China is world's biggest semiconductor market. If the tap will close on their semiconductor imports, so would've their economy at large.

Why would anyone (least of all Taiwan) want this? Trade isn't a zero-sum game, and both parties benefit from it. Trade wars are very unpredictable, as the way the US lost the Trump-era trade war with China shows.

It's true that some in the US see China as a rival that must be "strangled". Views outside the US are much more nuanced - China isn't going to disappear and is way too big to just strangle. There are major issues dealing with China, though.

US politics have had a "big bad" for 80 straight years now, it's basically a reflex.

>Should I remind of the fact that Taiwan was very glad to sell any amount of semiconductors to mainland China.

US sell chip to China as well until the Huawei ban. TSMC stop making chip for Huawei when the US hammer came down.

how can you tell Taiwan to stop selling when your own companies is selling to China? how's that fair?

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