TSMC to send hundreds more workers to speed U.S. plant construction

Bleeding edge tech will stay in Taiwan. I also wonder if the Arizona plant could stand on its own without guidance from HQ. Got a few recruiter emails about jobs in the AZ plant and you had to spend at least a year in Taiwan training before returning to the states.

It isn't the latest and greatest by the time this plant opens. They ain't stupid enough to give away their top of the line stuff, that stays in Taiwan. This plant will help buffer the US in the case Taiwan is attacked. Apple will find a way to make iPhone 16 the "best phone ever" while using iPhone 14 tech.

The necessity to protect Taiwan will be diminished, of course.

It's still a good idea, net net.

TSMC is a dependency not an obligation.

But I'd say that the reputation of the US would be on the line with or without TSMC. Japan and S. Korea also rely on the US for protection and if the US breaks it promise to defend Taiwan then it will permanently harm US relations in th le region, potentially losing the entire pacific rim to China because not just Korea and Japan but even fiveeye allies Australia and NZ have shaky knees when it comes to China. The fear of the US is that trade relations and shipping routes will be under chinese control in the pacific rim and most of asia, couple that with Russia and the US will lose trade and diplomatic influence over most of the planet.

Taiwan is a proverbial line in the sand. Every player knows drawing up a line and allowing your enemy to cross it is accepting their domimance and advertising your weakness.

But, based on what I know about PLA and CCP so far, my prediction is the US will lose Taiwan in a very humiliating way without any conflict.

I happen to believe the US can indeed win a conventional war against China and allies, even if it might take 5+ years. However, unless China attacks US troops first or US civilians on a US base or soil, americans will never support such a war and even then my guesstimate is that at no point in US history has there ever been such a low number of military age americans that couldn't give a shit and a draft unlikely to be approved by congress.

TSMC or not, China won't need to worry about the US as long as they play their cards right. Matter of fact, defeating the US in such a way is the best way to dominate the US for the rest of the century so I am sure Xi knows this and will be his biggest legacy to "reunify" taiwan and win the ideological/dominance war against the west.