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Comment by mft_ | Hacker News Reader

A couple of counterpoints:

1) Trump might be alienating his traditional allies and cosying up to Russia, but he still apparently sees China as a problem or adversary.

2) Thinking purely transactionally, the US is very dependent on Tiawan due to TSMC. Most of the US' largest tech companies are investing heavily in AI hardware (TSMC chips) and/or rely directly on TSMC for their own supply chain. I have no idea whether Trump et al see it this way, or this would be enough to trigger the US to protect Tiawan, but transactionally, it's immeasurably more valuable to the US than Ukraine.

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> 1) Trump might be alienating his traditional allies and cosying up to Russia, but he still apparently sees China as a problem or adversary.

That's not a guarantee at all. The only thing he's every been honest, consistent and truthful about is that nothing is sacred, everything's on sale, no values (economic, patriotic, environmental, political) will stand in the way of his own profit, there's always the willingness to make a deal and sell something (someone) off, and fuck the consequences, no matter how gigantic, embarrassing, and suicidally bad they are. Negative-sum deals are absolutely on the table as long as he comes out richer or more powerful.

China just needs to make a good offer and Taiwan's fucked when it comes to Trump's support.

Fair point.

"Let us take Tiawan and we'll give you TSMC for the next n years" would probably be a pretty strong offering.

TSMC machines have kill switches built in for such an event. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/asml-adds-remote-...

Sure, but I'm imagining a situation where China ensures the ongoing operations of TSMC via negotation with TSMC and the Trump government, to the satisfaction of all parties, and then being 'allowed' to take Tiawan as a result. For example, they could allow TSMC to function as an American-run entity for a number of years, or offer US companies very friendly terms, or something similar.

This doesn't account for the actions of Tiawanese nationalists working in TSMC setting off the kill routine themselves, irrespective of the deal struck, but it's still an interesting scenario.

> Trump might be alienating his traditional allies and cosying up to Russia, but he still apparently sees China as a problem or adversary.

It seems to me it's hard to believe anything Donald says, or to think it could not change without warning in the near future.

Don't listen to what politician say, watch what they do, to be fair his decisions were very anti-china, I mean, maybe it going to backfire, but it was anti-chine in it's principle

He’s too erratic to take any past behavior as evidence of the future. If he breaks promises to a bunch of allies, no other ally should feel safe because he hasn’t broken theirs yet.

All it would take for a pro-China pivot is the right leverage. Cash, blackmail, who knows. But it’s just a matter of whether the price is met, not whether the deal is available.

Trump was babbling about taking "raw earth" from Ukraine to make AI the other day.

I wonder if he knows what any of that means.

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