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Comment by L_Rahman | Hacker News Reader

We are all ignoring the obvious solution to this. One of the benefits of being a global hegemon is having close allies who are good at things we are not.

Intel fell behind on semiconductors and now Phoenix is turning into an outlying suburb of Taipei while the children of TSMC engineers are making the local school district look like magicians.

All the US has to do is subsidize one of the Korean heavy conglomerates, probably Hyundai, and get them to start pumping out cargo boats out of say Louisiana or Georgia with the promise of a government buyer. This problem goes away by 2032.

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That's not enough.

What happens if a long conflict breaks out between China and the US can't rebuild capacity lost in the initial phase of the war because China takes out that Korean ship building capacity?

With a capacity 260x times that of America the Chinese will be able to rebuild an overwhelming naval capacity, especially if the war technology turns to cheap, mass produced (semi)autonomous machines as seems to be happening in Ukraine?

Ships are one thing but really matters is the industrial capacity to build missiles that will be the immediate bottleneck. Many American missiles have a lead time measured in months to years and wargames scenarios for a conflict over Taiwan show the US exhausting most of their antiship missiles within weeks.

Once that happens the US will need to retreat from the area and the Chinese will be able to mass produce ships and probably missiles to hunt down any lingering American ships.

America will effectively lose their dominance of the seas and certainly the region.

Why aren't we trying to come up with something simpler, cheaper, and quicker to manufacture? We had this problem with bombs back before the JDAM was developed, and basically they just stuck an off-the-shelf guidance system onto a dumb bomb.

For that matter, why aren't we spinning up a few factories to build artillery shells?

> For that matter, why aren't we spinning up a few factories to build artillery shells?

As with most problems in the US today - short term thinking and seemingly lack of any sort of long-term strategic planning whatsoever.

I was a teenager when they were shutting down the (mostly mothballed, but still kept in enough working order to spin back up) ammunition factories in my state. I thought even then it was a stupid short-sighted move, and it's only proven worse since then.

Not only do we not have any production capacity to speak of - we also are now completely reliant on a handful of plants that are vulnerable to two or three well-executed attacks to take them completely offline. We entirely lack geographic diversity when before our arms manufacturing was spread throughout the country and fairly resilient.

As a nation we completely forgot the lessons learned in WWII. Production capacity is almost all that matters so long as you can hold the front long enough to spin it up. China is quite obviously orders of magnitude better positioned for this in the modern era. Perhaps even moreso than the US was in the 1940's given the types of arms that are expected to win future wars.

> What happens if a long conflict breaks out between China and the US can't rebuild capacity lost in the initial phase of the war because China takes out that Korean ship building capacity?

We launch ballistic missiles at each other. Probably kill 500-800M Chinese and 100-175M Americans.

China hawks love fantasizing about this stuff. Reality is the as Ukraine demonstrates, direct conflict between reasonably advanced states is a tarpit. A hot war between the top tier states is armageddon.

Even the question assumes that because the answer is "a few billion people die" it's not possible, and because of that (false) assumption, the first thing isn't possible.

If China starts sinking US ships half the people reading this thread will die before ever hearing about it. That doesn't mean China would never sink a US ship.

We remain alive today after decades of nuclear brinksmanship, because in general, people don’t want to die.

The longer term strategic outlook for the US is… not great. Why would China poke the bear when the bear has teeth? Wait for America’s internal instability to escalate, then roll into Taipei without a shot fired.

>"Intel fell behind on semiconductors and now Phoenix is turning into an outlying suburb of Taipei while the children of TSMC engineers are making the local school district look like magicians."

So after a while Taiwan is no longer needed and China can just take it. I am curious if Taiwan's government cares about this potential course of events?

>"All the US has to do is subsidize one of the Korean heavy conglomerates, probably Hyundai, and get them to start pumping out cargo boats out of say Louisiana or Georgia with the promise of a government buyer."

Again you think that Korea would not care about moving their strategic industries somewhere else?

They wouldn't be moving, they would be expanding into the US market. Its a win-win. Hyundai get's access to a previously closed off market due to cabotage regulation. And we get modern ship building. The only loser here are established ship builders who would be forced to modernize and compete. But long term that's a good thing for them too.

As an analog, I believe South Korean terrestrial armaments companies are doing the same thing with Poland, in order to gain access to European buyers. (Granted, Poland also has a labor cost advantage in Europe)

Taiwan’s strategic value has less to do with semiconductors and more to do with geography. It is the keystone of the First Island Chain. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_island_chain

>after a while Taiwan is no longer needed and China can just take it

lol, as if amphibious assault against a country that has been preparing invasion for 70 years, as well as a country that is at the forefront of electronics, is that easy.

yes, China is building tons of ships. but each ship, which cost a few hundred million each, can be sunk by Taiwan's advanced missile systems, for a few million per missile. Each ship needs to be fueled properly, which is also extremely hard logistical task, just ask Russia. And these ships move slowly across a region that is heavily monitored, making them easily sank. And once enough ships sink near the landing area, it would be even harder for other ships to make it to the landing beaches.

> as if amphibious assault against a country that has been preparing invasion for 70 years

You might want to update your understanding of the balance of forces in Asia.

For example: "China’s military has the capability to land ground forces on Taiwan within as little as one week after imposing a naval blockade on the island, according to a Japanese government analysis of Chinese military exercises conducted last year." [1]

Only the United States military could challenge the PRC in the western Pacific. But even that is not a certainty: "Indeed, the overall balance of conventional military power along China’s borders has shifted dramatically in China’s favor." [2]

It's not the 1900s anymore. The PLA isnt a peasant army. It's every bit as modern, and in some cases more so than even the US military.

https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/politics/defense-security/20...

https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/News-Article-View/Articl...

> China’s military has the capability to land ground forces on Taiwan within as little as one week after imposing a naval blockade on the island

you're using this one little quote to signify that China can take Taiwan? get real. that just means some boots will be on the ground, doesn't mean that these boots will make it past the beach. and naval blockade has very little chance of succeeding past a few days, when China will immediately be sanctioned by all the countries, leading to its collapse

Boots on the ground is basically the end game. Taiwan has no ability to overcome boots on the ground. They don't even take their defense seriously -- they haven't updated their defense doctrine (e.g., annual Han Kuang) for decades now.

> get real.

Hmm, who is more credible, the literal government of Japan or some rando.

This shift in the balance of power has been on-going for well over 10 years now. I've been following this for many years, so it's jarring to read very un-informed opinions on the balance of power in WESPAC, especially as it relates to PRC and Taiwan.

Read the many warnings from the various heads of INDOPACOM: China’s Sea Control Is a Done Deal, ‘Short of War With the U.S.’ [1]

"Indeed, the overall balance of conventional military power along China’s borders has shifted dramatically in China’s favor." [2]

By the way, this is against the USA, not just Taiwan, which has a joke of a military.

> China will immediately be sanctioned by all the countries, leading to its collapse

LOL at this absurdly ignorant take.

[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/20/world/asia/south-china-se...

[2] - https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/News-Article-View/Articl...

why does everyone just assume that Taiwan and China, which both consider themselves to be "one china" would not simply find some kind of peaceful resolution once the US backs off?

most likely, without a U.S. backer, they would just more closely integrate their economies and this would eventually result in a political solution

Due to the "p" word.

Probably few people here realize that China settled the majority of its land border disputes (12 of 14) through negotiation.

China, by and large, gave up much more territory than it acquired for each border settlement.

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