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Comment by nineteen999 | Hacker News Reader

One can only hope that the US learned from its mistake, and doesn't allow chip manufacturing to go offshore to that degree again in future peaceful times.

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It wasn't really a mistake. At the time Taiwan and South Korea were advancing into semiconductors, the US was more concerned with Japanese domination of the industry so having 2 small countries as alternatives to compete with Japan in some sectors of the industry was beneficial.

One of those small countries has a belligerent neighbor to the north, and the other is coveted by a much larger superpower that thinks it still owns it.

The NK situation was obviously widely known at the time, but that the US population/government didn't forsee or take seriously enough the rise of China is perplexing to some of its allies.

It's a lot harder to go to war when countries depend on each other economically.

Tell that to Russia, its economy is - military production aside - in shambles due to Western sanctions and especially the brain drain.

The idea of economically enforced peace only works for democratic countries where the government has to show at least a bare minimum of respect towards its citizens, but not in countries that follow the whims of their respective Dear Leader.

Putin is surrounded and supported by people who are probably losing a ton of money right now. When he finally learns his lesson, it's probably going to be a harsh one.

That won't undo any of the damage done by the war, nor bring anyone back. It will pretty much not have any effect at all.

russian MOD people are making bank right now.

Too bad for them they can only spend it in Russia on Chinese stuff. (My father in law lives in Moscow. Muscovites pay more for old Japanese cars than brand new Chinese cars)

This was famously the argument made in the book The Great Illusion, 5 years before the outbreak of the First World War.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion

Wars are often irrational.

It wasn't wrong, just too early.

At the time international trade was still fairly minor, so although a war would be deeply unprofitable it'd still be possible. Today's economy looks quite different, with even basic consumer goods coming from overseas. If international trade were to suddenly cease, most major countries would be in serious trouble really quickly.

The most extreme example of this is the European Union. Its economies are so deeply interwoven that they act as a single entity. Separating them to the point that one of its members can independently support a war economy would take decades, so it does indeed make intra-European wars virtually impossible.

It doesn't make war impossible, just economically ruinous.

And yet it may be the best deterrent we have.

Make's war more unappealing to those that are rational, which is the best you can hope for because there is no sure fire way of dealing with the irrational.

Although I think wars do often have an irrational element, economic considerations aren’t the only ones that should influence rational decision making.

War is pretty hard when a decent portion of the thing you need to actually do war are made by the country you're at war with. Sure, you can start a war, but it'll be over when your local warehouses run out two weeks later.

It could be, but are there many historical examples of wars ending for this kind of reason? Typically, no country has its economy set up for wartime production during peacetime. But that can change quickly when there’s a will.

We survived the Cold War because the U.S. and the Soviet Union were able to rationally agree on not using nuclear weapons. I sure believe countries today can rationally agree on avoiding war for fear of the economic consequences.

> US learned from its mistake, and doesn't allow chip manufacturing to go offshore to that degree again

I don't think USA made any mistake. It was always heavily invested in South Korea and Taiwan. Neither of them would even exist today without USA's investment, interest, and stewardship.

Intel is the one that made the mistake.

On top of that, the US outsourced of a very very ecologically damaging part of industry. The remains of Silicon Valley, literally named after the hotbed of what was manufactured there, are the largest concentration of Superfund sites in the US.

Is it that ecologically damaging? Maybe in the old times when silicon wafers where produced in Silicon Valley and when no-one thought or cared much about the environment. But today, I would assume the damaging effects of semiconductor manufacturing are less profound. But I do not know. Any inputs are welcome.

> But today, I would assume the damaging effects of semiconductor manufacturing are less profound

Manufacturing chips of just TSMC accounts for 5% (!) of Taiwan's entire electricity consumption, Intel's Arizona fab produces thousands of tons of hazardous waste a year [1]. It's far from the old days, but still a massive impact.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/18/semicond...

Meanwhile we're offshoring all of our software engineering jobs at a breakneck pace with no regard for the consequences on our future.

The whole same story is going to play out again and in 20 years we'll be panicking because nobody in the US will know how to write software anymore.

But just look at our profit sheets!

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