The point is redundancy in case China follows through on their threats to invade.
The Russian economy is grinding to dust right now, and the Soviet vehicle inheritance evaporating.
At some point, they stop being able to pay workers and troops, and while martial law can keep things moving, it's all getting much more expensive after that.
Putin has been very careful to try and keep the war awaybfrom his Moscow powerbase...so it's clear he recognises his authority and position is far from unlimited.
Ukraine needs more soldiers, hard without full conscription, with the pool of heroic volunteers already committed, and it needs more artillery shells, that NATO can't readily supply because NATO never imagined playing quartermaster this kind of warfare in the 21st century.
But apparently Ukraine are developing nuclear weapons so we'll see.
If the US will provide TSMC with better deals on all fronts than what the Taiwanese government can, then there's nothing that can stop them from slowly abandoning Taiwan and moving the HQ and vital operations to the US over time, especially that the Taiwanese government is not a major shareholder in TSMC.
Have you heard of Operation Paperclip? The moment China steps in Taiwan, all those vital TSMC engineers will be flown to the US along with the critical IP and given a blank cheque to replicate Taiwan operation on US soil ASAP. TSMC is preemptively building the infrastructure there in preparation for such an event, so it can outlive whatever happens to Taiwan. TSMC has little inventive to tie itself to Taiwan and its people who are not its employees. Every big company thinks and acts like this. Taiwan can't force TSMC to stay there if it doesn't want to.
Also, German scientists who could leave the country were fleeing to the US before the Nazi regime started WW2 and also during the war, before it was a formal operation to gather them as prisoners of war when Germany lost.
The point is that Operation Paperclip happened in the aftermath of a total strategic defeat of the German army, where the Allies were the victorious power.
Taiwanese scientists and engineers are currently living happily in Taiwan, which is not a fascist regime cracking down on civil liberties. So they're not going to flee before the war, and once the war starts "extract significant numbers of educated personnel" is literally identical in military complexity to "fight and defeat the Chinese naval blockade".
>Taiwan can't force TSMC
IIRC TW foreign minister said a few years ago it was pure American wishcasting to expect TSMC employees to be evacuated before TW women and children. Around the same time TW politicians rebuffed the idea that TW would destroy their own fabs. That's TW's leverage, they control who gets on and off the planes and boats. Reality is if PRC makes a move, they'll lock down the airfield and shores, that's PRC's leverage - to control if planes and boats get to leave in the first place. Ultimately, TW politicians knows locking semi talent on the island is leverage, especially if they lose, because most of them won't have a ticket off the island.
Not to mention paperclip is the victors getting the spoils, and US is far from assured any victory or there would be any TSMC employees left to paperclip if motivated PRC wants to deny. Or that TSMC is like 70k people excluding their families. 300k if you include other direct TW semi employment. More if you include indirect (supply chain), and ultimately there's considerable sole source semi suppliers on TW that TSMC US won't be functional just like how ASML can shut down hardware by stopping inputs for maintenance. It's not just packaging and domestic talent that's another bottleneck, TSMC Arizona stops with TW inputs as much as it doesn't without ASML ones. And so far there's no real public plan to reshore that supply chain in US.
It is also naive to think that governments (US and especially ROC/Taiwan) do not have influence over TSMC. This sort of thing is not necessarily measured by level of shareholding.
The islands are Chinese. The US back Taiwan as an anti-communist and anti-China (divide and conquer) tactic, including because its location. If the communists had lost the civil war, the mainland and Taiwan would all have remained under ROC control and it would have been interesting to see what the US would have come up with, instead (academic and thought experiment but interesting to imagine nonetheless).
In Ukraine the US don't want to be dragged in a war against Russia and things have played well for them so far (really the US are the only winners so far).
"In June 2008, a TVBS poll found that 68% of the respondents identify themselves as "Taiwanese" while 18% would call themselves "Chinese".[33] In 2015, a poll conducted by the Taiwan Braintrust showed that about 90 percent of the population would identify themselves as Taiwanese rather than Chinese.[34]" [1]
I did not expect to be able to seriously discuss geopolitics here, TBH, it never works and it is never possible to dig deeper. Case in point...
let's think
1. CCP took over California by force 2. CCP killed everyone who resists 3. CCP leaved, but built a puppet regime 4. The puppet regime rewrite schoolbook, taught everyone they're not American 5. 100 years later, a poll found that 68% of the respondents identify themselves as Californians
I must admit this is a bad thought experiment because Americans lives in a stolen land, it's not same as Taiwan
BTW, the Qing Empire is rule by a minority ethnic(满族)
And, by race, we are all Asians, can you understand the difference?
You are like comparing the genocide of Native Americans to a war between two Native American tribes.
let's go furthur abt this experiment
1. native american tribes took each others land, in the end, it became a single national country - Amerikka, for hundreds years 2. CPC came, colonized Amerikka, when it leaves, it splited California, did things I listed above
still, a bad thought experiment, because
> We wouldn't let native american tribes take each others land nowadays either
you've already took all their land, so they can not take each others land anymore
as i said it's hard for you to understand such things, you are in the totally different history background, you're in the colonizers' view, colonized America has became the status quo to you
If the US is currently in a state of division, with one part being a puppet regime under CPC (or Russians) control, you would find it easier to understand this problem.
At this point it's better to just have that nuclear war instead of the rest of us being pawn of nuclear states. There is no dignity in this.
Your are describing the statu quo as almost no country officially recognizes Taiwan
The business interests _are_ the political landscape today.
The proper word is "reunite", as it was agreed with the US
It sure gonna hurt the US Military industrial complex, no war = no money
"1982 U.S.-PRC Joint Communiqué/Six Assurances
As they negotiated establishment of diplomatic relations, the U.S. and PRC governments agreed to set aside the contentious issue of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. They took up that issue in the 1982 August 17 Communiqué, in which the PRC states “a fundamental policy of striving for peaceful reunification” with Taiwan, and the U.S. government states it “understands and appreciates” that policy. The U.S. government states in the 1982 communiqué that with those statements “in mind,” “it does not seek to carry out a long-term policy of arms sales to Taiwan,” and “intends gradually to reduce its sale of arms to Taiwan, leading, over a period of time, to a final resolution.” The U.S. government also declares “no intention” of “pursuing a policy of ‘two Chinas,’” meaning the PRC and the ROC, “or ‘one China, one Taiwan.’”"
> The proper word is "reunite", as it was agreed with the US
So the US and the PRC had some milquetoast diplomatic correspondence which did not include Taiwan. If the PRC now occupies Taiwan against the will of its people and population, presumably under fire from the Taiwanese army, it' just a "reunification"?
https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Taiwan-elections/Taiwan-s-T...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/2024_Leg...
[0] https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2023/09/02/...
You are not being objective, a poll is not a vote
In a vote, the registered population gets to vote using official ID
In a poll, only 'god' knows who the respondents are
No blood on my hands!