Comment by _t9ow | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _t9ow | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Taiwan is still not allowed to buy F35 fighters. And the weapons they are allowed to buy from the US are delivered late and of poor quality:

Taiwan Is Getting Its U.S. Weaponry—but Years Behind Schedule: https://www.wsj.com/world/asia/taiwan-is-getting-its-u-s-wea...

U.S. delivered "wet and moldy body armor" to Taiwan, Pentagon watchdog says: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/u-s-wet-moldy-body-armor-to-tai...

The US has not been a good partner to Taiwan, truth be told. If you browse social media that are popular among the Taiwanese, you'll discover that there is quite a bit of resentment towards the US, because they see the US as coercing them into transferring their much-needed human and intellectual capital in world-class semicon technology. (E.g. ~50% of the staff now working at the Arizona fab are TSMC engineers who moved from Taiwan, because American workers allegedly do not have the requisite skills or work ethic.) And yet the US is not willing to reciprocate by transferring its military technology.

I'm sure Trump's disastrous meeting with Zelenskyy has greatly damaged confidence among the Taiwanese. At some point more and more Taiwanese might just decide that a mob boss who speaks their language is better than a mob boss who doesn't.

"Taiwan is the United States’ 7th-largest merchandise trading partner ($158.6 billion in total goods trade), 10th-largest export market ($42.3 billion), and 8th-largest source of imports ($116.3 billion), according to 2024 U.S. data (and when the European Union is considered as one trading partner). "

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10256

Sounds like we've been a great partner with Taiwan. Also, wanting to trade on "business I.P." would make more sense if you mentioned we're already doing around $158 billion in business with them. Each side's businesses have a lot of mutual dependence where you'd want a higher production of chips that each side could trust. We had a supply shortage with fabs not long ago, too.

Whereas, military tech is a strategic advantage we owe to nobody. They can buy it or not. I'd rather they not be ripped off in the process. Helping us make cutting edge chips here is different than giving people weapons.

For example, I'm American. I'm allowed to have business, but not military, technology. I can probably license and operate a fab. I can't buy fighter jets at all. That's despite how Harrier jets as a solution to traffic congestion could boost my personal productivity.

All of the most novel aspects of modern fighters lie in control systems and sensors driven by modern fabs.

I'm not clear why you think the two are different from an ability to wheel and deal standpoint other than because that's big bros narrative?

> military tech is a strategic advantage

For the Taiwanese, their semiconductor prowess is a strategic advantage for them. It's even informally known as the Silicon Shield. Taiwan's hope/expectation that US reciprocates with strategically important technology is perfectly reasonable.

The Silicon Shield is something the US is actively trying to undermine by coercing Taiwan to transfer its technology. In addition, every TSMC engineer that moves from Taiwan to the US is someone who isn't contributing to Taiwan's local Silicon Shield. And yes, "coercing" is the right word when you are a mafia-like superpower threatening 100% tariffs -- though at this stage I am not sure why the Taiwanese should hold out any hope that the US is a reliable or trustworthy guarantor of their security.

> They can buy it or not.

Obviously Taiwan cannot. The US refuses to sell F35 fighters to Taiwan. And even countries that do buy these weapons do not have full operational control -- e.g., the U.S. has the capability to remotely disable or restrict the functionality of F-35 fighter jets purchased by other countries.

> I'd rather they not be ripped off

Taiwan is getting ripped off. 1) Delivering equipment years behind schedule as well as 2) delivering moldy dilapidated equipment are forms of ripping off your customer. And in this case America's customer is too afraid to dare offend it.

Maybe Taiwan should consider chips to be a strategic advantage and refuse to sell them to the US for a while.

Guess who Taiwan's largest import and export trading partner is?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com