Comment by yo_yo_yo-yo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by yo_yo_yo-yo | Hacker News Reader

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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