Comment by nickpsecurity | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nickpsecurity | Hacker News Reader

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"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.

> 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.

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?

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?

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