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America's National Security Wonderland

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The discussion of what we're going to do about taiwan was totally absent this presidential election. It's the most important matter of our time and no one is addressing the elephant in the pacific.

Instead, there is no primary election for either major party, and the minor parties don't even show up. What a joke of a system.

The real issues are climate change and biodiversity. If you only consider short-term crises, I don't see Taiwan being bigger than Ukraine. The loss of TSMC would impact tech industry, but it would be a loss of capacity rather than capability.

It would be a huge loss in capabilities. The only place to build the most advanced process semiconductors we have (like the ones in NVIDIAs flagship AI cards) is at TSMC, in Taiwan. A lot of the equipment there is highly specialized and tightly controlled. Considering the EU is not exactly interested in US foreign policy right now, you now have to take into account that the most advanced EUV systems are made solely by a company in the Netherlands... you see how the US might never be able to replace the current state of the art chips.

It's possible foundries in SK or the new ones we're building will get there one day, but it wouldn't be for a while.

The best thing we could be doing “for Taiwan” right now is investing in American chip fabrication. I haven’t been following much, but how’s that TSMC factory in Arizona going?

Although ironically, this could actually be _bad_ for Taiwan itself, because reducing dependence on Taiwan means that defending it could become less critical.

Yeah this, could not care less about whatever crappy closed source AI system some megalomaniac CEO wants, or the iPhone 90, or whatever adware junk the “geniuses” of Silicon Valley are dreaming up.

We need to figure out how we’re gonna survive climate change and prevent the destruction of our only home and the creatures that inhabit it.

You are downvoted probably because people here care more about computers than destruction of nature.

You are the guy at the bottom here

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/368/486/52c...

and I'll go stand next to you.

You can't have a serious discussion in a world where people are using "DEI" as a red scare.

Pete Hegseth thinks DEI is America's greatest enemy. Trump thinks Putin is his friend. If anyone described what is happening without naming the party, it would be described as a coup.

Americans voted their preferences. The “coup” would be by unelected “we know better” spooks using DEI as a feel-good cover to continue business as usual in meddling in foreign affairs that are none of our business.

Dictators are often voted into power, and maintain sham elections afterwards.

January 6th shows what Trump thinks of free elections.

You don't want to respond to the claim that the previous administration mostly felt that it knew better than the median voter or the claim that the previous admin was more eager to start and to continue wars than the current admin is?

> the previous administration mostly felt that it knew better than the median voter

Does the current administration pushing unpopular policies also suggest they think they known better than the median voter?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/02/20/trump-pol...

Both parties are co-opted by the world oligarchy. That’s true.

China will 100% invade Taiwan if it looks like Trump won't win the next elections, will likely do it anyway even in that case.

This is trump's last term in office

they are already aggressively campaigning for 2028

Well, unless it isn't?

But even beyond that prospect just replace Trump with Trump's successor whoever it is.

Jr?

Right, but how long is the term? And which one of the Trumps, exactly?

Maybe the US can make a deal and get the "mineral" rights of Taiwan and China and the US cuts the Taiwain cake? Afterall, that seems to be the model for Ukraine.

china will invade taiwan when the world moves away from their chip dependency

These world leaders (Xi, Trump, Putin) are not for prosperity, they are for control. They want control and will sacrifice prosperity to get it.

Something like 40% of the US GDP is accounted for by direct government spending [0]. Then some % of the GDP is on things that are really non-discretionary, like food and shelter and a further % is private spending by people who are actually government employees. Noting that, it is conceivable that the US is undergoing a much softer version of Soviet-style dissolution. Overstretched, unable to pay for military needs that have been mis-assessed by central planners, no safety valve provided by a healthy decentralised market.

America's gentle deindustrialisation has been noticed. Everyone seems to know about it. The problem is that nobody seems willing to put the legwork in to maintain the US as a global hegemon and - simultaneously and in contradiction - nobody has briefed the military planners that they have to pull back a bit.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending_in_the_Uni...

If the persons in charge prefer to increase their own and their friends' wealth, instead of looking what would be better for the country? Or maybe there's simply a different understanding of "country": for some the homeless aren't real citizens (or real humans), for other the workers are second class at best... so why would the leadership do things for those?

I rarely agree with you, but I do on this one. I don't think it's only the military planners either, who could have benefited from a heads up.

Can someone explain the root of tension between the US and China? Is it just vanity and inevitable that two major powers will fight? Resource scarcity?

Beneath a few layers of culture it seems the internal values of the two countries are very similar and fairly compatible.

Maybe that breeds contempt but seems like there is plenty of room for the two countries to play together nicely especially if they make progress on their faults. In spite of the online acrimony, each side seems to understand well enough its own and the other's faults, and they generally seem to be trying to work on their own faults as much as working on each others'.

This seems like a relationship that may come to blows but should be salvageable, especially if the blows can be softened or avoided perhaps altogether.

Perhaps one reason is that US thought that the globalized free trade world system will always benefit it more than other nations. However in the last few years China grew big, and figured out how to make that system work in a manner advantageous to them. So US is under-cutting that system, or in other words changing the rules of the game so that China can't make progress easily.

Fundamental question is will US be ever able to come to terms with a world in which US is not the dominant world power?

Practically if you look at the British or Russians, it doesn't seem to make much difference to the lives of ordinary people, the losing of 'world power' status.

> Fundamental question is will US be ever able to come to terms with a world in which US is not the dominant world power?

I think one missing key aspect is: will the US be ever able to come to terms with _an authoritarian_ power being the dominant world power?

There was a lot of optimism around China (much like there is today with Japan) in the 2000's and early 2010's, but their continued lean towards authoritarianism and regional aggression (Taiwan, South China Sea, Philippines, etc) has definitely soured that view.

When you can't beat an authoritarian power while remaining democratic and peacefully supporting other nations in your region, the obvious next step is to discard those constraints.

In history class I was taught in the 60s and 70s the US preferred and encouraged China to develop itself, partly (or mainly I guess depending on your view) as a foil to the Soviet Union, partly because of internal humanistic values and belief that prosperity is good for people.

From a 50+ year historical standpoint it seems even more than philosophy that the two should get along.

Not confident in my understanding though, isn't there more to current politics than recent events and the last 30 years? Wondering if and suspecting there's something with more predictive value than online headlines and pundits.

Demographics clearly -- TFR types of analysis seem compelling, although that's on a longer time frame than current tensions.

It is kind of puzzling. Obviously there's alot of hypocrisy involved but nothing more complicated that the historical US relationships with South Korea, the Philippines, or Indonesia. And our interests should align, we don't really have competing strategic objectives, unlike with the Soviets. A "Co-Dominion" if you want to look at it like that should have been most likely.

Maybe Red Dawn had it right.

Col. Tanner: Two toughest kids on the block, I guess. Sooner or later they gonna fight. Jed: That simple? Col. Tanner: Maybe somebody just forgot what it was like.

There really is little commonality between the two cultures.

What commonalities do you think there are?

President Xi's writings are full of humanism that would make at least one of the US political parties blush. Versus his tactics seem to be the envy of the other -- and in spite of the polarization in the US they probably could be brought to admire Xi's values.

Have you ever lived in China, or spent time with Chinese? Or are you basing this solely on the propaganda?

I have not spent time in mainland China but I have spent time in Hong Kong and while there sought out and immersed in Chinese "propaganda" there. Which was conspicuous and omnipresent. Have had a good amount of exposure to Chinese nationals professionally and socially, probably in the vicinity of 10% overall of each.

Culture in the home is not that.

And HK culture is not mainland culture, though the party is trying to make it so. Not that there is a single mainland culture. Hokkien != Shanghainese != Beijing, etc.

If you strip things down to the rawest motivations, then sure everyone is similar. But all the details will look extremely different to most Americans, even CNY, filial piety, meals and family structure, etc.

A lot of this is "legacy" from the anti-communist era. China is now Communist in name only, but people haven't updated their thinking from the 1950s.

Some of it is the unresolved territorial dispute over Taiwan.

Some of it is opposing economic competition.

Some of it is bi-directional; there used to be a lot more rapprochement until relatively recently, but changes in internal CCP politics have led to China using an external enemy to bolster internal unity. An exact mirror of the US in this regard.

Hopefully it will remain no hotter than the odd "shoving war" that Chinese and Indian border guards engage in, at a remote border post where neither side is allowed guns.

China is "communist" in name only, but they are still a one-party totalitarian state, which is a big reason liberal democracies and "communist" countries weren't friends in the first place.

In fact, if "the state/people own the means of production" had been the only aspect of communism (and not the totalitarian dictatorial governments), I doubt the Cold War would've been as serious.

The US supported Chaing Kai Shek and the Nationalists over Mao and the Communists after WWII. Also, Mao was a staunch Stalinist so there is the holdover tension there. Mao continued with that even more so after Stalin died and was determined to be basically the Stalin of Asia.

Also China was abused by the west prior to that, though mostly Europe so there is probably no love lost there.

I would recommend Frank Dikötter books on China, The Tragedy of Liberation, Mao's Great Famine, and The Cultural Revolution.

It’ll be interesting to see how hands-off the present administration will be with the military. Certainly the aura of a consistent US foreign policy posture has been shattered by recent realignment regarding Ukraine. Foreign powers will naturally now be tempted to test how much of an actual threat any future US military action may be. That calculus has certainly shifted.

I think the goal of the administration is to let China take Taiwan, but before this happens poach as much talent and knowledge from TSMC (hence the overtures of splitting Intel) so that when Taiwan destroys its capacity on attack it’ll be business as usual for the US.

Taiwan is certainly in an extremely unenviable situation.

But that’s the plan, I fully believe, to make America great yet again, all that Taiwanese industry will get reshored here in the USofA.

If you assume the PRC is going to try Taiwan one way or another, wouldn't your actions be exactly the same regardless if your plan was re-shore manufacturing here for domestic politics or you were trying to re-shore for military strategic reasons?

The position of Taiwan isn't enviable at all. If I were Taiwanese based, I would make sure you pay close attention to the internal politics of the nation. You might not have much time in the event someone makes a different choice. The PRC wants Taiwan whole and intact if possible.

I don’t think China cared about Taiwan, apart from posturing, until ChatGPT happened and the US started restricting ML hardware sales. Then the US started pressuring ASML.

My, unpopular, opinion is that ML will not be successfully applied by the US military, because the culture of US tech is to exploit the customer, in this case the Pentagon. I expect the Chinese will be far more organized and thoughtful about integrating ML into a broad warfare strategy that isn’t just expensive razzle-dazzle.

That’s why I’m super curious as to when and if the current administration will touch military spending and organization.

As somebody that works for U.S. government and has witnessed tech-illiterate-but-somehow-still-in-charge-of-engineers bureaucrats getting bamboozled by tech companies first-hand more than once, I agree with you 100%.

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