If China invaded Taiwan to controls fabs, the USA would just destroy them with air power. And that's assuming Taiwan didn't sabotage them first.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Taiwanese government hasn’t subtly signaled to China that the fans would be destroyed within 10minutes of an invasion. It would be stupid for them not too. Then again China is liable (but not guaranteed) to invade Taiwan less because of the fabs, and more because they consider Taiwan a rogue province that they want back.
Nobody thought it would get as bad as it did
The entire moral of the story is "maybe don't back Poland." (WW2)
WW1 was stupid but inevitable, in that if it didn't happen then it would have happened soon after. A lesson all had to learn.
> And had not «mere anarchy», as W.B. Yeats put it in 1916, been «loosed upon the world»? To many, the war had seemed the greatest calamity since the fall of Rome. Germany, from fear and ambition, and Austria, from resignation and despair, had willed the war in a way the other belligerents had not. It marked the culmination of the wave of pessimism in German philosophy which was its salient characteristic in the pre-war period. Germanic pessimism, which contrasted sharply with the optimism based upon political change and reform to be found in the United States, Britain, France and even Russia in the decade before 1914, was not the property of the intelligentsia but was to be found at every level of German society, particularly at the top. In the weeks before the outbreak of Armageddon, Bethmann Hollweg's secretary and confident Kurt Riezler made notes of the gloomy relish with which his master steered Germany and Europe into the abyss. July 7 1914: «The Chancellor expects that a war, whatever its outcome, will result in the uprooting of everything that exists. The existing world very antiquated, without ideas». July 27: «Doom greater than human power hanging over Europe and our own people». Bethmann Hollweg had been born in the same year as Freud, and it was as though he personified the "death instinct" the latter coined as the fearful decade ended. Like most educated Germans, he had read Max Nordau's Degeneration, published in 1895, and was familiar with the degenerative theories of the Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso. War or no war, man was in inevitable decline; civilization was heading for destruction. Such ideas were commonplace in central Europe, preparing the way for the gasp of approbation which greeted Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West, fortuitously timed for publication in 1918 when the predicted suicide had been accomplished.
Paul Johnson, Modern Times.
Just go and search for early pictures of ww1, France was still using 19th century flamboyant uniforms that proved totally ineffective and later gave way to brown, camouflaged cloth.
Everyone thought WW1 would be quick and dissipate in a matter of months. Nobody was prepared for year long conflicts.
We can think that the war was predictably stupid because in hindsight we can see all the stupidity, but that is our historical privilege. Nobody was prepared for that in 1914. Just like we might very well be totally unprepared for the probable next worldwide conflict.
"In 1862, Richard Jordan Gatling invented a multi-barreled, rotating gun operated by a hand crank that could fire up to 200 rounds a minute."
https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/gatling-gu...
I'm not sure what war you're thinking of.
It's also much easier with hindsight to view them as precursors to the trench warfare of WWI. But I believe contemporaries viewed it more like classic siege warfare.
WWI occurred in a brief window where defensive technology/strategy was much more effective* than offensive technology/strategy.
*defense almost ways is easier, but it was much more than normal in that period.
Everyone, except those who were in the military officer corps and thus knew that modern war was going to be a long, drawn-out, bloody affair. In other words, the experts knew it was going to be long, but the politicians and the media ignored the experts' opinions because what do they know?
And this repeated itself in the second world war. The late battles near japanese homeland were the first to reach the United States population without the heroic and patriotic filtering, all thanks to the work of Tom Lea.
China understands that wars of expansion rarely have worked since WWII. They know a single US submarine could cripple world semiconductor manufacturing for months.
But I agree, they might try it for non-economic reasons like reunification. Or maybe cause they think--rightly or wrongly--that the USA would cower and wouldn't support Taiwan at all. Wars can be caused by miscalculation too.
coughs in Crimea, Hongkong and arguably Israel, Syria and Turkey
Wars of expansion can and do still work, all it needs is for the rest of the world to stand aside just as they did in 1933-45 - and the signs don't look good, given that the reaction for Russian and Chinese annexation projects was nothing more than a couple ineffective sanctions.
I don't want to give what Russia did legitimacy, but its closer to self-determination than most liberal internationalist (the IR theory, I don't mean US liberals) will give it credit for. Crimea was only part of Ukraine due to the dictates of the Soviet Union and had only been part of it since 1954. Then again, maybe I'm overestimating how strong Taiwanese nationalism is.
In places like Syria, you see what happens when different ethnicities fight over territory. It's a bloody mess and everyone is worse for it.
Israel is in a different position since they really just want the land and not really the economy and people on the land. They are ethnically cleansing and then populating the area with settlers.
I was going to say that is unique in this age, but its really not all that different from what China did in Tibet or is doing in Xinjiang.
This, together with the democratic nature of the western world has led to a place where annexation of an area becomes infeasible for a place with a large opposing population (which is why Israel is not officially annexing the west bank).
At most that would only last 1 election cycle, so they would have to unify and hold it fast, very fast. Any Administration that would allow China to take over Taiwan would surrender (rightfully) all their political power and be ousted by a landslid the next election
By destroying the fabs, China would drastically level the playing field, putting those Taiwanese semiconductors out of reach of the US too.
Sounds like you just described the Oil/Gas industry, in which about a dozen wars have started over the last 100 years.
Fabs also capture very little value. TSMC and Intel aren't the trillion dollar companies. Google, MS, Amazon, etc. are.
So there's really no upside. Only the downside of a large fraction of the world's high end fab capacity disappearing overnight. It'd be one thing if one side of the US and China had their own backup capacity. But they don't. And they won't for at least a decade, in my non-expert opinion.
MARKET CAP:
Uber (2x) > Ford
Airbnb (3x) > Hilton
The entire gig economy is this premise, so what's your point?
Fabs are a human resource, if you kill their staff or destroy them, their value is $0
At beat up on countries who can't fight back. And even then, its not really to steal oil, but just ensure that it is flowing.
The only real attempt to seize foreign oilfields was the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. That didn't really go well for Iraq. And, on their way out, they scorched earth and lit 80% of the wells on fire.
I keep thinking there's hope to avoid this war, but the way people comment here and on Reddit (in abject ignorance of geopolitical reality), I fear it's inevitable.
Fifteen (!) countries support Taiwanese sovereignty. The _rest of the world_ respects China's claim. It's insane that this rhetoric is even present in Americans' minds.
For some people it doesn't mater how stupid a war is. Only if it's profitable.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/13/semiconductor-shortage-us-te...
Okay, the U.S. destroys the Taiwanese fabs to keep them from communist China. Then what?
Other countries have availability, but only China has the supply chain to extract and process these elements at scale. For any other player to step up production to match current demand it would take years.
[1] https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/geopolitics-rare-eart...
> Even more so if they annex/invade Vietnam.
Don’t you think that will start WWIII in itself? Vietnam definitely won’t go down without fight, and they have a pretty good track record.
edit: Apart from that, what would that stupid act do to the economy of the involved parties, and the world in general?
It's all interwoven.
Fuck it all, and great reset, or what?
I’d bet the big players already have plans for introducing decoy trucks, trains, planes & ships in the event a war breaks out in our age of unlimited surveillance.
I mean... TSMC is right here: https://www.google.com/maps/search/tsmc/@24.7768163,120.9992... If China wants it, their problem is not that they don't know where it is.