Hacker News Reader

Comment by beeflet | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

> 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...

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

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?

they are already aggressively campaigning for 2028

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com