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Comment by kube-system | Hacker News Reader

Those fabs are a fairly significant part of the whole situation.

China wants them because they have those sweet ASML EUV machines that they are sanctioned from buying.

The US needs those fabs to stay controlled by Taiwan because they don’t want the world’s most advanced contract fab to be overseen by a hostile country.

Taiwan needs those fabs because it makes them important for the US to defend. And because those fabs are so important to everyone to who wants high end chips, just having them is a good defense.

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I remember reading somewhere that Taiwan has rigged all the TSMC fabs to explode and flood in case China invades it. The fabs however are less important than the innovation and technical knowledge to run it and is stored elsewhere and also with the human resource. These can be quickly transported to ensure they can setup elsewhere and prevent the tech from falling into China's hand.

The machines may be rigged to explode, flood, or otherwise hose themselves, but active sabotage is largely unnecessary. If China takes Taiwan by force, two things will happen: 1) the US will heavily sanction anyone who trades with them, so even if they manage to keep the TSMC fab online it won't do them any good in a commercial sense; and 2) without ongoing service and support from ASML and many other Western vendors, the equipment will work for about as long as the leased aircraft that Russia stole from Airbus's and Boeing's customers.

They might get six or twelve months of production out of TSMC's facility, and then things will start to break that they will not be able to fix easily. Invading Taiwan will cause economic damage measured in hundreds of billions of dollars at a bare minimum, and much of that damage will be suffered by China.

Bottom line, it would be insanely stupid of China to attack Taiwan. Of course, many people (including myself) said the same thing about Putin and Ukraine, so...

Apple produces almost 100% of their processors at TSMC (Samsung was making some previous gen if I recall). If Taiwan falls, Apple falls.

The US economy will be in ruins, and nothing can stop a large scale military conflict.

>and much of that damage will be suffered by China

Signiciantly more will be suffered by US/west whose advanced industries extracts disproportionate patent fees and have extreme reliance on TW semi for short to medium term. We're talking trillions in knock on effects. Proximity of semi production / supply chain concentration in TW and broader east Asia is PRC's trump card in war. During peace US has trump card in sanctions / tech control, but during war PRC has leverage of simply setting the advanced economies back 30 years which will actually close relative gap. PRC might even pull ahead if they manage to mass rollout of 28nm indigenous fabs and complete indigenous semi supply chain before anyone else. That's without mentioning during war, PRC has incentive to attack SKR/JP fabs to draw US into first island chain where they're weakest to honor security commitments. If things ever get heated with US, it would be insanely smart for China to threaten TW/JP/SKR as well. And if PRC attacks TW, I surmise there's going to be three way side deal between PRC, US and TW leadership to maintain TSMC production continuity in exchange for evacuations for TW leadership to US who would otherwise get the noose for treason. Which itself makes the notion that TSMC is rigged to blow counterproductive - surival of TSMC is TW elites golden ticket off the island - US isn't going to look kindly to a TW admin that explodes US economy and tech lead.

> Significantly more will be suffered by US/west

People can live without smartphones, but can't live without food. In case of war, westerners will need to postpone buying some electronics or clothes, but the Chinese will resort to severe food rationing.

That is old data, today China produces more than enough to feed its population. They produce 650 million tons of grain a year which is more than enough for their population, and is a net exporter of meat.

To make it easier to understand, total world grain production is about 2250 million tons for a population of 7.8 billion. At worst China would need to ration more expensive meals, but people wouldn't starve.

Someone else addressed per capita self sufficiency below. But operationally, this strategy is likely only if US has ability and appetite to enforce blockade from other producers. And likely only viable short term before PRC finishes conventional deterrence. As we can see with UKR, most of the world ignored sanctions on food and energy, including west. Keep in mind PRC is buying a lot of ag products from US because of Phase One trade deal. Medium long term, they'd rather decouple and build up other producers.

Another Q one should ask is how vunerable US is to comparable counter action. Because US agriculture is highly industrialized and automated whereas PRC ag is in the process of automation and still reliant on labour. Sufficient cyber attack on US ag infra during harvest season and US is forced to ration. What happens to automated John Deere tractors when they have no GPS to harvest. Same with familiar threats of embargoing PRC oil because US is self sufficient on the metric that there's enough fossil fuel resources in the ground. US is only as self sufficient as how much it's 130 refineries can produce. If US interdicts PRC energy, don't be surprised if PRC takes down comparable levels of production state side.

Abandoning trade with China will hurt us, certainly. But unless the Xi regime is overtly suicidal, that's all that will happen, and we'll eventually get over it.

As for cyberattacks from China, those can only do so much, and in any case they can be mitigated by cutting the fiber. OTOH, shooting down GPS sats will lead to war. They know better than that. I hope.

> will lead to war

This is in event of an war.

Legally, so is blockading PRC, including food and energy imports which is not an unfamiliar discussion in US policy circles. As for cyber, US DoD / Biden also explicitly communicated to both PRC and RU that cyberwarfare on critical infra = actions comparable to war. I don't know if cutting fibre is a joke, there's millions of PRC diasphora, unless US disconnects from internet globally, that's assuming PRC agents aren't state side already. So the real question is, does the US know better than to intervene when PRC attempts armed reunification with TW, which seems increasingly likely while bills are being drawn in congress to boost TW into major non-Nato ally? Because if US does, there's no telling how things will escalate, especially when modern connectivity and increasing PRC missile capabilities means CONUS is no longer safe. Incidentally, I think both sides knows this, on paper but frequently, better judgement gets overriden by domestic politics.

> shooting down GPS sats

It's unlikely China or Russia, or anyone, has the capability to shoot down GPS sats. A number of countries, the US included, have demonstrated capability to shoot down satellites, low orbit satellites. GPS satellites are in geosynchronous orbit, which is a whole different species of animal. Shooting down an LEO satellite can be done with an SM-3 missile which has a mass of 1.5 tons. That's significantly lower than the mass of a rocket needed to put the satellite in orbit, and that's possible because SM-3 is not designed to reach orbital speeds, only orbital heights. Its primary mission is anti-ballistic missile defense and ballistic missiles can reach thousands of kilometers altitude, but not tens of thousands.

In theory one can design a missile that can reach GSO heights without reaching GSO speeds, but that requires a dedicated project, which would be extremely expensive, and very difficult to keep under wraps. All missile launches are pre-declared to minimize the risk of a nuclear war. You can find a list of all orbital and suborbital launches on wikipedia (e.g. [1]). If anyone tried to test a missile that can reach GSO heights, they couldn't keep it a secret.

One can then try to shoot down GSO satellites with full size rockets, like Falcon Heavy. But there are 31 GPS satellites out there, and 30 Galileo. I doubt either Russia or China (or even America) have 60 full size rockets available to do a blitzkrieg strike against the GPS satellites.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight_launches_i...

GPS isn't geosynchronous. And not that high. Three relevant graphics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System

I remember reading somewhere that some country is working on laser weapons to knock out satellites. That makes more sense than using a missile as all you want is to disable a satellite, not necessarily destroy it and add to the space junk ...

China has an indigenous 7nm production capability - no EUV, so more multi patterning, but it still works.

The US heavily sanctioning China would basically be the end of America's economy, it isn't a realistic option. There also won't be enough public support for it as long as conflict is contained to the APAC region.

Furthermore, it probably also means the disintegration of US global sanctioning power. Europe would rather trade with China than the USA, assuming it's mutually exclusive.

I’m not so sure about Europe siding with China. Values come into play.

https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2022-07-30/swiss-...

Interestingly, the press is starting to float trial balloons along those lines: https://www.reuters.com/article/germany-economy-china/trade-...

Pick any Walmart, Target, or other big box store and see how much of their stock is not Chinese made. Cutting trade would basically shut all of them down and there would be a revolt.

> 2) without ongoing service and support from ASML and many other Western vendors, the equipment will work for about as long as the leased aircraft that Russia stole from Airbus's and Boeing's customers. They might get six or twelve months of production out of TSMC's facility, and then things will start to break that they will not be able to fix easily.

Right. Fab tools require constant maintenance. I'm sure they keep a stock of repair kits and spare parts, but probably no more than a few months supply. Their supply chain ops (procurement and engineering) sets min/max stock levels of these parts, but I'm willing to bet that there's no more than a few months supply on hand. And then equipment gets dirty, wafers get scrapped, yield plummets, etc.

Serious question: why is the US trying to (or is already preventing) China from acquiring EUV chip tech? What’s the reason for such an aggressive intervention in a free market?

The best military technology needs the best silicon. The US has long placed export controls on technology with military applications.

So then how come they're right next to China, "an unstable hostile power", and not in the middle of mainland US?

Globalism.

The oligarchs in the west decided to outsource key industries to developing countries to increase their profit margins.

Now they're scrambling to fix those mistakes.

Which is why forced birth is making a comeback - the only way to ensure local production now is to ensure you have a permanent underclass you can squeeze for your profits.

As globalism unwinds, there will be an open desire to roll back child labor and environmental laws as well as birth choice.

We'll get factories back in the USA - and wish we hadn't.

Or we'll see a massive expansion in prison labor, even worse than we have now.

> Which is why forced birth is making a comeback - the only way to ensure local production now is to ensure you have a permanent underclass you can squeeze for your profits.

Correlation not causation.

That makes no sense. If the right was trying to build an underclass of workers, then the easiest way to do it would be to not build a wall at the southern border.

The simple explanation here is the correct one: they oppose abortion on social grounds.

Military electronics aren't cutting edge. Modern processes are a liability for ruggedness and temperature extremes.

Not all military electronics are deployed on the battlefield.

> free market

There's no such thing as a free market in our world. It's just a myth. Everything is regulated or under the purview of treaties or laws.

I'm a little surprised in ASML's pivot here TBH.

Just earlier this year they were complaining that Chinese companies were ripping off their IP [0] and IIRC even within the last 2-3 years they were themselves hesitant to send bleeding edge tech over for similar reasons. I wonder what has caused their tune to change.

That said, if I'm reading the tea leaves properly...

I think the last couple years were a wake-up call to the US that not only are they overly dependent on other countries for critical components, but that China is far closer to becoming 'self sufficient' than us (1).

Ukraine was a bit of a wake-up call to us, that we are too afraid of nuclear escalation (2) but also to China that embargoes can happen more quickly than you'd expect and hurt almost as fast.

What this means however, is we are now both in a race for self sufficiency on this front.

... Really random question, I wonder why Mexico doesn't have more fabs?

----

1 - I think the US has a weird definition of 'self sufficiency' mind you. For instance in some cases it seems the attitude is 'Oh we did that again and can ramp up.' As a general comparison, I'm betting the possibility of getting a '100% China content' vehicle is far higher than getting a '100% USA content' vehicle.

2 - Without getting into it, there was a short window early on in the Ukraine conflict where I would have doubted Putin's willingness to go nuclear. IMO It's one of those cases where the would police card may have been worth playing, were it not for our missteps in using it over the last 20 years.

[0] - https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/11/asml_chinese_rival_ip...

> These can be quickly transported elsewhere to ensure they can setup elsewhere and prevent the tech from falling into China's hand.

Wouldn't it still take quite a long time to get a new fab to the point of being productive? These machines aren't exactly sitting in storage by the hundreds, and I imagine you'd also need to dial in all the processes pretty well to get good yields? (though I have no idea what that entails...)

> Wouldn't it still take quite a long time to get a new fab to the point of being productive?

Possibly years.

I mean... in the nightmare case...

I honestly don't know if you can 're-clean' a clean room if it's flooded with the right things. And the right things might just be seawater.

(IDK. Not a fab engineer by any stretch.)

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