TSMC Taiwan is panicking that the World will loose its interest in defending Taiwan against China once processors can be made elsewhere. Plus TSMC is afraid it will start losing market once there will be more players there.
Look at Ukraine, aside from grain and a few specialty items, it's not a huge exporter to the world. Yet a serious war there has caused global problems. China going for an expansionist romp into Taiwan will be 20X as impactful.
Anyway, I thought things were going to go a lot different in 1999, last 20 years have been a real ride.
So, the initial invasion might just fail, replacement material will come over the Pacific and from Japan, global trade will basically cease to exist. On top of that you have the fallout from a military failure in China itself. In short, it'll be a mess of epic proportions and Taiwan will most likely not be invaded successfully.
And ultimately TW doesn't have to be invaded successfully, it can be blockaded permenantly (and trivially) to deny both war material from going in or chips from going out.
@hef19898
> potential to start a shooting war
Escalating to shooting war is expected, but the point is a comprehensive blockade by PRC is feasible worst case contingency plan that can be done without any complicated hardware. Glide naval mines and MLRS can be launched from mainland in quantities that US+co simply lack capacity to circumvent to thoroughly lockdown TW ports/coasts and airstrips indefinitely.
@LAC-Tech
>yet don't hear a peep about Chinese military issues on Global Times or XinHua
Listen harder? State media like Xinhua or CCTV7 (military) shows PRC accidents all the time. CCTV7 interviews also frequently shit talks about PRC military deficiencies, but it's dressed up as we've strived hard to improved substandard X to modern standards etc, and we still need to improve on areas we're lacking.
How much did you hear about Russian military issues in January?
It can be seen as the inflection point where China realised that churning out vast numbers of obsolete Soviet designs had to yield to quality and training.
This was Russia's exact hope in Ukraine.
China needs to do about a millions things very competently and quickly to take Taiwan. The activities involved are things that would be hard for most western militaries today, even with all their money and skill.
Here's a list of difficult things for china to do: 1. It's got to stage it's troops in a way that's real but maintains the element of surprise against an actor with US Intel backing it up. Even if it's just 1 guy from the NRO with a satellite phone and a laptop. The edge for Taiwan will be massive.
2. It's got to be able to cross 100km of open ocean with about 10-20 thousand troops as a first wave that can be dropped off rapidly to fight and survive on it's own.
3. Then those same ships will need to return and onboard more and more waves of troops that will need to be landed until they can safely establish maritime operations. In land warfare gaining air superiority is a first major goal. This is one of the reasons the Russians have gone so badly in Ukraine. For China, they will need to be able to own the sea and provide safety for their own ships as a highest priority.
4. The fighting on the beaches, will turn into fighting in the cities, and then fighting in the hills. Each one of these is a real challenge on it's own. It took the US military years to get good in Iraq.
5. Whilst China has lots of cash, and lots of men, and lots of tanks etc. The will power to fight may be an issue. For the Taiwanese soldiers, fighting and dying may mean independence for their family and nation. For the Chinese soldiers, fighting and dying probably just means they die. Its kind of a pointless activity for the soldier on the ground who just needed a job when they signed up for the PLA.
Why would China use tactics and weaponry from 80 years ago though?
China has lots of medium-range missiles, but that won't help much at the beach.
Bullets and artillery are much the same. But AI weapons such as anti-ship missiles and the slimmer 20 inch diameter torpedoes are more use on the defense.
It would be the same for any operation against Taiwan. None of the steps you've outlined would happen before achieving air supremacy.
Taiwan has a weak submarine force, so the Chinese objective would be to control the air over the Straits to prevent the surface fleet intervening.
Once air supremacy is achieved in any conflict the dominoes of layered defence start falling.
I would imagine that any Chinese move towards Taiwan would be preceded by a couple of weeks of ferocious air attrition and ballistic missiles being used for SEAD.
It turns out the 90s was basically western civilization's peak.
This is a surface level take on the situation.
The disruptions to global shipping would be enormous, to say nothing of security implications, or fear of open conflict between nuclear powers. Potential destruction of semi-conductor fabs would be just the tip of the iceberg.
That's pretty rude and meaningless. Why not just say "I disagree"?
> The disruptions to global shipping would be enormous, to say nothing of security implications, or fear of open conflict between nuclear powers. Potential destruction of semi-conductor fabs would be just the tip of the iceberg.
Not if the rest of the world does not come to Taiwan's aid and allows China to roll over them, obviously. That is presumably what OP is saying their worry is, so that is what you have to address if you want to disagree.
"Surface level" invites someone dig deeper. It's not a personal comment about a persons latent talent. If you think it's rude to point out a common opinion based on surface level knowledge of a complex situation, that's on you.
We have the ARM licensing example. Could a player like TSMC do a reverse license where they license out their FABs factories for different other players? Or is that at the core of what they do but in different form?