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Comment by gadders | Hacker News Reader

This is good news for the US and bad news for Taiwan, geopolitically.

The idea that the US only cares about Taiwan because of chips is popular on HN but just dead wrong. Taiwan has been part of the China containment strategy before TSMC was founded.

So the US doesn't care about Taiwan, it cares about China. Taiwan is just a tool.

Well, yeah… The US doesn’t really have allies (the one exception some would say is Israel) - why would Taiwan be any different from the others? Interestingly, TSMC only became a stand-out player in the last 15 years, before then there were basically zero reasons for the US to care about Taiwan except to contain China. Now they have one reason apart from containing China, but it’s still mostly just about China.

The United States has many allies. Obviously the US and UK have a “special relationship.” Then there is AUKUS. Then NATO. DoD calls a number of SEA countries “allies,” including Japan and Korea.

Stating that the US has no allies other than Israel is unequivocally false.

The really before the claim suggests that GP is referring to internal attitudes, I would imagine that they are aware that NATO is technically an alliance.

There is probably no alliance on earth tighter than the U.S. and the U.K.

If that's not an alliance, then you might as well say that alliances don't exist anywhere. (And maybe that is what you mean to say.)

Even the alliance with Israel can't compete with the alliance between the US and UK from World War I to now.

> There is probably no alliance on earth tighter than the U.S. and the U.K.

I'd argue North Korea & China have a closer relationship.

That's less of an alliance and more of a dependance.

They do not. China sometimes — though not always — endorses and enforces Security Council sanctions against North Korea, and acts as a moderating force in its contacts with North Korean leadership. Substantial differences of opinion between the U.S. and the U.K., not to mention actual policy antagonism, is very rare.

Exactly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_chain_strategy

I think it cares about Taiwan as a democratic country but I think the chip fabs are becoming a geo-political factor as much as oil fields or other resources.

i.e. we don't want [Russia/China/Whoever] to invade Country X as Country X is an ally and a democracy, but as Country X has [Oil fields/Chip Fab/Lithium Mine] we REALLY don't want them to invade.

The difference between an oil field and a chip fab is that the equipment is more easily destroyed in a chip fab, vs a hole for an oil well. Not to mention that expertise in human capital required for chip fab is way higher than that of an oil field.

Even a successful invasion of taiwan guarantees either the people important to the fab will leave, and the equipment evacuated, or destroyed if unable to evacuate.

As Saddam’s Iraq unfortunately proved when invading Kuwait, it is really easy to destroy oil fields, and much harder to clean up the damage. I can’t see much difference between that and destroying chip fabs.

Depends. China's obsession with Taiwan is a mix of domestic signaling and posturing internationally and the latter is mostly aimed at the US. China could choose to be more aggressive over Taiwan, as the US should care less. But, since the US care less about Taiwan, perhaps China will turn its saber rattling to other strategic interests of the US, giving the Taiwanese some reprieve.

You're overestimating the importance of that specific chip.

My assumption is if they can do that chip, they can do others and there is less need to defend Taiwan and the massive TSMC fab there.

No, TSMC said that the cutting edge fabs will always be in Taiwan

Good news doesn't have to mean overwhelming good news. Directionally, it is clearly good, not bad, and not nothing.

This isnt Nvidia and this isnt some high end CPU.

This is a mobile phone CPU, and its Apple. You are getting insignificant technology.

Not so. Apple's new mobile processors are routinely the fastest processors in the world (single threaded) when they come out. The A17 pro is currently the 17th fastest CPU, and the M3 (which is in MacBook airs and iPads) is number 2.

Sure these don't have the scope or number of transistors of like an NVIDIA Blackwell or something but in terms of performance/watt these are ultra high-end ICs.

No one is competing on CPU though. Its like having the highest RPM lawnmower, no one cares, its not useful.

To make it worse, they arent even the best. Its getting mid tier, and in 2024, its nearly unreasonable to buy mid-tier when low-tier is good enough for everything.

Not sure about that, the consumer CPU market is probably more competitive right now than it's been in a decade, primarily on efficiency.

Also not sure what that has to do with the original point, which is that the A15 is not an impressive chip to be manufacturing in the US because it's designed by apple and meant for mobile devices, neither of which are reasons to discount the complexity of the chip.

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