But perhaps the most important thing, Xiaomi is now able to make chip similar to Mediatek. They are the third largest Smartphone manufacturer by shipment volume. And they are still growing.
This is bad news for Mediatek and Qualcomm.
If you are just using apps, 15 seconds is more than enough to launch and setup an app, for anything more it will be down graded a little.
Still dang impressive but the form factor becomes the limiting factor.
Try working in the shade. The max brightness isn’t helping either.
Outside was too bright for me to see my laptop screen even at full brightness, but by the time I had it outside and had discovered that my phone had overheated so much it refused to turn on until it cooled down.
At least my drink was still cold.
I think most children prefer to play on phones these days. Mobile gaming is huge. To the point where game loops on high-end games are optimized around thermal throttling.
I think this is a trait of all chips. As a general rule of thumb, both desktop chips and graphics cards come with a huge and noisy fan. Demand for aftermarket solutions is so great that it spawned quite a few specialized companies.
How many high-end laptops ship with at least one fan?
Desktops can have plenty of cooling so you actually get the real speed of whatever you are using.
I’m now at the iPhone 16. The performance of those chips with 8GB in non throttled environment (Neo..) can run as a fully performant macOS.
Yet, as a phone I don’t feel upgraded performance since my SE 1st gen days.
Sometimes I get stuttering, basic browsing can get the device pretty warm, sometime camera lags to launch.
My usage profile didn’t change much over the years.
So I can only assume codebases became more bloated, websites became more heavy on resources. Because, if my device now throttles to what I was happy with years ago assuming the software would behave the same, I’ve expected my usage to give me at least cooler non stuttering performance.
But that was never the case.
If we assume this is true, it at least meant if you didn't upgrade you'd get even worse performance.
The only computer that's the exception is my macbook m4. This thing was and still is ridiculously snappy.
A very big portion of this is just Wirth's Law in motion. Software is getting worse rapidly, and AI is accelerating the decline in software quality, where performance is an aspect of quality.
But the other part of this is the latency vs throughput tradeoff. More and more of our systems are optimized for throughput, or worse are optimized for throughput in ways which causes significant experience degradation if you are unable to meet the throughput demands. There is a natural tension between throughput and latency, and we are seeing this play out across every aspect of both hardware and software system design. As a simple example, nothing you do to USB4 will ever match the latency of PS/2 connection for an input device, but a PS/2 port delivers around 7-12 kiloBITS/second of throughput vs USB4 delivering up to 120Gbps and a /minimum/ of 20 gigabits/second of throughput. PS/2 uses blocking direct hardware interrupts for input devices, vs asynchronous polling on USB. This architectural difference will never allow for USB to match PS/2 latency, regardless how "fast" USB gets.
This tradeoff is leaning more and more towards throughput everywhere you look. Just today, the new M5 Ultra is announced w/ 1.2TBs/ of memory bandwidth. The M5 Max had 14ns of memory latency while high-performance DDR4/DDR5 typically achieves 8-9ns of latency. That's 36% more latency (conservatively), but nearly 10x the throughput. When you stack up small changes like this at every layer of the system, including in our overreliance on micro services and networked data I/O vs local data in applications, and it adds up. There are so many places in modern software where there is some network connection required for something that could have been achieved without that connection, and waiting on that connection consumes a huge amount of wait time relative to the total time for the operation, and we all feel it.
Im sure there are many more things that add up to focus more on throughout over latency as mentioned above.
The only use of a slow machine is it gives a point where you can say more optimization isn't worth it. Everything else I can do better on a fast machine than a slow machine.
I have been away from Android for a while, is it any better there?
Androids launched ≥2026 got a serious haircut in either memory or other features though. We'll see in 2028.
Maybe if you want to use all of the big mainstream apps the experience might be different, but I tend to have a fairly minimal setup on my phone. On android I would disable animations, use Nova launcher, Firefox with UBO, and a bunch of fdroid apps. This all added up to a very snappy and efficient system that I haven’t been able to replicate on iOS.
I understand why, mind you; would VS Code or Slack have as much velocity of improvement if they had to individually manage GUI toolkits for each platform? Would VS Code be as extensible if the UI were built in Swift or Qt?o But the results are still there.
There are projects to try to make this /better/, like Tauri - Electron but using your system's built-in browser engine rather than shipping a new one, so that you don't have to have eight separate copies of Chromium loaded into memory - but they still need to reach feature-completeness and projects need to do a non-trivial migration, and then they need to test across multiple browser engines, etc., so it's still not the same.
Regardless, this is the situation we have right now; everyone figured that RAM capacity would continue to increase at the same rate as RAM usage, "it works on my machine" but it's a 32 GB Macbook, Chromium optimized for performance and not memory usage by assuming that each 'page load' would be short lived (browser behavior) rather than having one 'page load' run for hours or days (Slack, VS Code, Spotify).
Or at least, that's how it went where I work.
And good news for everyone else.
And eventually, just like the Western solar, battery, pharma and car companies all have learned, the CCP will use that knowledge to surpass and undercut everyone else.
Is this better outcome for the US in the room with us?
All three will be going away sooner or later.
Yeah sure they won't be producing any F35s or million dollar per shot missiles, but was that a good idea to start with? Are they worth the money when once again lots of inexpensive arms are shown to be more useful in modern wars than a few handfuls of expensive ones? Both Iran and Ukraine have shown that one side being a few steps ahead in military technology and willing to dump money on equipment still has limited returns. There is no "I win" technology apart from indiscriminately killing most of the entire population, which just makes you an existential enemy to the rest of the planet and erases 95% of the value in taking that territory.
Regardless of the tech stack the work still needs to be done and now the EU has to do it. The Eu does not have infinite money, in fact they have less than the US so there will be cuts elsewhere.
Before outsourcing manufacturing to China Europe was making a third of all industrial things on this planet, so Europe will be just fine.
> the work required for GDP growth to refugees
I don't get this one. Do you think the European economy is propped up by refugees? I think there are 5 million of them in total in Europe, most of them Ukrainians and it's likely Ukraine will become a EU member at some point in the future...
And they will continue to do so. Just at a higher cost with no US to maintain bases and do technology cost sharing. That extra money has to come out from somewhere...it will be entitlements. Combine that with terrible demographics and that remaining manufacturing base will be built on a bed of sand. :)
>Before outsourcing manufacturing to China Europe was making a third of all industrial things on this planet, so Europe will be just fine.
Europe can insource everything that China makes. They are not stupid people. You mistake the benefit westerners got from outsourcing. It held back inflation in products because the value came from the living standards difference between chinese and EU people. Remove that disparity by bringing back everything and EU will be living with a lower quality of life because all those products will be significantly more expensive with no alternatives.
>I don't get this one. Do you think the European economy is propped up by refugees? I think there are 5 million of them in total in Europe, most of them Ukrainians and it's likely Ukraine will become a EU member at some point in the future...
Same point I have been making. The consequences of demographic collapse can be hidden away by having young tax paying peoples do the shit jobs that run the economy at low wages. Same thing the US does with illegal migrants. Remove that and the hidden costs are now dumped onto the population. Result: Lower living standards for those who remain.
Sure, GDP in the USA is growing faster than the EU, but the question is who is benefiting from the increased GDP?
The answer is in Dah00n's comment. The rich are getting richer, while the population gets scraps. Meanwhile, people in the EU get guaranteed healthcare, paid time off, maternity leave, better worker's rights, etc.
They had that 20 years ago? Since then the rich asset owners have been accumulating a bigger share of the pie in the EU as well, it’s just marginally less pronounced because there is less wealth to go about in the EU due to the multi-decade long stagnation (outside Eastern Europe and a handful of other countries). On the whole I find it extremely hard to view this as a positive without a huge amount of wishful thinking.
People in the EU need to start thinking about how to improve things rather than exclusively focusing on holding onto what they already have (which is slowly turning into scraps..). To a large extent the old EU countries just froze in time after the GFC.
The EU is not perfect and recently they took a turn for the worse with shit like ChatControl and the ppwr killing small businesses.
But economically it's not a problem. It's not a race to be the richest, though America always makes everything a contest. We just need enough to live comfortably.
The tendency to protect corporate profit margins is the western Achilles heel and China knew they could exploit that.
China could have the monopoly of rare earth production and refinery for all of eternity. But because of their reaction towards all the us allies when the us increased tariffs, I don't expect them to be relevant enough to disrupt markets with rare earths sanctions in 10-20 years.
... Except when they can't in any meaningful span of time.
- China weaponizing the world's dependence on rare earth
- The US weaponizing the world's dependence on SWIFT
- Russia weaponizing Europe's dependence on natural gas
- Iran weaponizing the the world's dependence of oil supply through strait of Hormuz
You don't have to replace 100% of workforce, replace just the ones whose work is the easiest to do by a robot.
Replacing 50% of workforce buys you enough time that by the time your available worker pool has shrunk 50%, robotics and AI will be much better and you will be able to replace another big chunk.
Production-wise, shrinking demographics are not such a big deal (they still have a lot of youth unemployment).
Shrinking demographics is a problem due to a) the ratio of workers vs seniors, b) shrinking overall demand pool -> shrinking economy c) smaller overall talent pool -> less diversity, less 'geniuses', i.e. the real drivers of innovation, and less capability to mobilize for great projects
Now Japan is known for quality electronics and options and Taiwan for state of the art semiconductors.
When we buy software from Silicon Valley or a nice Mercedes Benz from Germany we don’t use this same language “outsourcing.”
Colloquially, outsourcing implies low quality or cheap price. No, what’s happening here is that China makes the best products in numerous categories and we are choosing to import them, because the best products are the most desirable.
That said some of these industry especially metallurgical ones will never return to Europe or US as they basically destroy and pollute the environment on a large scale, in China that still seems acceptable but also might change promoting them to outsource to other countries which they already do in some areas I think.
China has made a tremendous effort to move to a clean(er) industrial system, using a lot of renewables and clean energy and improving environmental standards. At this point production in China is probably the best for the environment compared to most countries, including the US that is deeply invested in oil production.
They are also moving close to a point where they will bring Thorium Reactors on line they don’t have to. They could just stick with uranium, but they’re not.
Is this part of the fact that they have engineers running a lot of of the things at the top of their government instead of lawyers?
They seem to be building a lot of infrastructure they are in the process of building several dams on the Brahmaputra River.
China: 525 gCO2/kWh
And like you said, China is putting a real effort in. I don't see the US trying to reduce domestic short hop flights with electric high speed rail. I don't see the US trying to replace gasoline cars with EVs. I don't see the US curtailing structural incentivization of pickup trucks and SUVs.
The main US policy seems to be "spend trillions on wars for oil" rather than accepting the inevitable decline of oil and planning around it.
Imagine what those kinds of people would have said in China in the 70s, with western industries being vastly more advanced and efficient. "It's over, we will never catch up." they would probably have said. Wrong then, more wrong now.
It will be interesting to see what China does. They aren't ideologically committed to exclusively serving the interests of the wealthy, but they still have lots of rich people in the (ahem) Communist Party, so who knows.
In the west, billionaires are often able to get extremely favorable treatment by the law as an expression of the power money gives. This is not the case in China, in which the party stands at the top.
In practice that's just a difference of incentives that I'm not sure at all is beneficial for anything but an authoritarian regime.
One can prefer a regime where it's very hard for people who abuse their power to avoid punishment if it's all public to one where the powerful are emboldened enough to be able to be shameless. Even worse when the shamelessness is seen as the purest display of power, and thus people compete in their public misbehavior. But still, understand that the real barrier to punishment in the first case is not to avoid doing bad things, but to make sure that the witnesses either don't exist, or are too scared to say anything.
A judicial system that actually has no sacred cows would be better in all cases, but the sacred cows everywhere do their best to make sure this doesn't happen.
That is not to say that in time they’ll start to do many of things that happens in the west where those at the 1% or 2% walk away, in time China may drop down to that level, on the other hand, I would like to believe the United States will start to have the same reaction that the country had when Sputnik went around the Earth and change course and I don’t mean sanctions, tariffs, wars, and threatening neighbors to the north and to the south.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Report_on_Manufactures
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_School_(economics)
Parallel: the industrialization of China for the most part happened after Deng Xiaoping, but are people wrong to credit him for setting the course?
In America, there is one fast food place that does it differently than everyone in the market they don’t franchise and they don’t lease/rent.
They own everything as they expand (the land and the building), which means it’s a little bit slower when you expand, but they don’t care but they are very profitable.
The owner probably gets a call every other week from large equity companies trying to sell them on doing it like everybody else and their pitch they can make you a worldwide company if you just let them in to f you.
If you "franchise" a CFA, you don't own the store, you don't own the land, they severely control your income, you are required to physically work at the store (in other words, they control you as a laborer), and you can't re-sell the franchise since you don't own it. You have no equity. They refer to you as an operator.
When you leave the business, CFA picks someone else to give it to. You get paid nothing because you never owned it.
They're also very weird in picking their operators. I can't speak for every CFA, but where I live all the operators are white evangelical Christians. This is probably a side-effect of CFA's policy of not letting anyone who has debt be an operator, and buying everything without financing is a big thing in the evangelical Christian community thanks to Dave Ramsey.
The media to this day portrays China as if it was 80s. Yes, at that time it was an open-air manufacturing plant. You can run rudimentary floor operations with high school educated workers, but you still need trained engineers and managers to run the operations. Exporting engineers quickly became impractical, which led to local engineers getting trained. At some point the training became the bottleneck so local educators were trained. And so on.
Over the years, China has built the entire industrial pipeline: all the way from education and vocational training, to scientific research, to local engineering houses. Remember, the people who built Shenzen are now retired. Or to put it into perspective, China is currently at roughly similar age of industrial boom as post-WWII USA was in... the late 90s - early 00s.
"The West" had a head start with regards to IP and China is indeed fighting an uphill battle there, but they have a huge domestic market to grow the companies out. The proud "Designed in X, made in China" things are being replaced with white-label "made in China", where "designed in China" is implied.
Do you have a robot vacuum? It's probably Roborock / Dreame / Ecovacs, not even some western branding.
I feel you're trying too hard to make believe this is somehow unexpected or unnoticed. The fact that subcontracting work to external companies acts as an investment on said companies to develop skills and competences is something that is known since always. The argument that the reigning VC mentality is that this investment is an acceptable tradeoff due to reasons such as these investments being limited to non-critical business concerns.
Part of what led me to believe this was waking up and realising they're also simply better at offering LLM inference: cheaper; faster; more innovative.
It's a horse of a very different colour from outsourcing where someone is simply chasing the lowest bidder.
MediaTek Dimensity 9500 is also manufactured by TSMC N3P process in Taiwan. [2]
There was no world interdependence change (unless one considers China and Taiwan to be the same countries).
[1] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Xiaomi-launches-XRing-O3-claim...
[2] https://www.notebookcheck.net/MediaTek-Dimensity-9500-Proces...
Would Xiaomi or the CCP accept the reputational and legal risk of getting caught with a backdoor? Recall the CCP considered the arrest of the Huawei executive in Canada as an offense against itself.
The answer to that question in the US is within epsilon of “no” thanks to the cloud act.
Europe and China have passed similar laws. However, China has a reputation for passing laws then selectively enforcing them. Maybe if you get on the right side of the right party member, the answer might still be “Yes” there.
Anyway, the next question to ask is: Who would I rather backdoor my device?
I doubt the Chinese government cares much about me, and unless I vacation there it’s an international incident if they, say, hack my car and murder me by aiming it at a tree at 95mph, like the CIA apparently does now:
https://www.motor1.com/news/138679/wikileaks-claim-cia-hack-...
Of course, the US government banned cars from China. Presumably this is because they do not have the mandated remote murder network port open, or, if they do, the US doesn’t have the necessary permissions to access it.
For instance election tampering in the US is a well-documented thing: However it almost always favors republicans in districts with electronic voting machines that do not generate paper trails.
As for the person you are replying to, their claims have been documented by most media outlets, places like wikileaks, and their claims are backed by US legal requirements to backdoor stuff (like the US Cloud act).
A bit of selective memory necessary for that take given good old Crypto AG
Now, if the EU would start make to make chips that have no subsystem to screw me over, that would be something.
Why would they not do the same? They are very pro-surveillance for a start.
They are backdoors, with not even very good plausible deniability.
It's so on the nose it's comical.
There are accounts of interdiction and post-manufacturing compromises, such as those revealed in the Snowden leaks (2013) and most recently by reporting about the Israeli security services' sabotage of Hezbollah pagers and 2-way radios. These projects didn't expose primary manufacturers to the reputational and legal risk of association.
Until there's evidence of backdoors implanted by these companies, it's better to adopt a "trust but verify" approach and use standard layered security practices to detect intrusion. Conventional network intrusion and insider threat campaigns carry less risk of failure and are simpler and cheaper to execute.
The fact that the CCP is relaxed about core Chinese companies running their manufacturing in Taiwan might suggest that the CCP considers that it can make China and Taiwan one country, at a time of the CCP's choosing.
China isn’t going to invade China until after we get our semiconductors up and running in Arizona for real
(because US won’t have to think about that situation ever again)
removing dependence imperils that island, CCP already has an EUV machine so the inevitable sanctions and export controls on ASML’s in Europe won’t matter either
yeah equity asset values are going to tank but US will get serious about the supply chain immediately (which is already very much in progress), plus all the older nodes to alleviate some pressure off of the active compute demands
They would lose all of TSMC if they do any military actions. It's not the fact that the CCP thinks that they can make Taiwan and China a country, it's the the fact that most of China does in fact consider them as one country. Taiwan is ready to defend themselves, but are very happy keeping their relationship with China the way it is.
Now that US has already opened the gate to labelling nation head as drug seller, this just eases things for China.
Any period time? US waged war for 20+ years in Afghanistan. Pretty effectively! To what end? Not an end an army can really achieve so… there you are.
But a war that might actually be popular? To save the world from communist dictators and make sure we have chips for our precious devices? I wouldn’t count out the United States. Or nuclear weapons, which still exist and are a thing.
No guerilla warfare, no insurgents, no need for extended beyond-visual-range warfare that depletes missile stockpiles
Was with you until that last one. If you haven't noticed missiles, drones, and interceptors have played a central role in ukraine.
But if you mean in a metaphorical sense, how long until the 7th Fleet could get to Taiwan, the answer is 0 days for first response, 3 days for everything located in Japan, and less than a week for the full mobilization of the 7th Fleet (that's 50+ ships and nearly 30K soldiers). The entire Pacific fleet could be there in a week and a half.
(Granted, we're assuming competent US leadership, which is not the current administration.)
Last time used faced a conventional military that could actually challenge it was in Korea.
It won’t have complete areal superiority or entire division surrendering after running into contact with US forces like they in Iraq. “Shock and awe” of course can be very effective just probably not against China. Even now US is running out of materiel against Iran and can’t really sustain a prolonged intense conflict while being able to protect its gulf allies from ballistic missiles and drones.
Change the leadership (which will happen soon) and when there is actual support from congress to fund and intervene in a conflict in Taiwan, then you will see a vastly different US military response.
That was an occupation and a low intensity “pacification” mission. Waging a prolonged war against a military peer on the other side of the continent is a bit more problematic (considering that US is/was on the brink of running out of advanced weaponry in Iran despite having aerial superiority which they won’t over Taiwan, Japan would have to get involved as well cause otherwise US would have to entirely rely on the fragile carrier fleet).
Using tactical nukes (even regardless of the extreme geopolitical downsides that might bring) wouldn’t necessarily give a great tactical advantage either, unless they are willing to do that over Taiwan itself to destroy the landing forces).
I feel like Russia thought the same of Ukraine, even though it is way bigger
Taiwan? All surface ships are sitting ducks. Troop transport ships would get absolutely decimated, and then the landing troops would get swarmed by drones all over again, and then they have to maintain logistics to the small minority that land (good luck with that). And that's without naval drones.
With naval drones? I have no idea how China gets anything across the strait.
And all the above is true for a competently organized Chinese invasion. Which it won't be.
China have more credible threat of bombing economically relevant building like TSMC, or capturing leaders and protestors like they already are doing in Hong Kong.
The tactical situation in Taiwan is very different though. I think it would come down more to what’s happening in the air since the stalemate in Ukraine is in large because the Russian airforce is almost completely neutralized and can only be used to launch cruise missiles from a safe distance. I doubt China would invade unless they feel they can somehow achieve at least temporary air superiority and achieve their other objectives during that period.
Air defenses are probably much more important than drones overall.
But I agree that pretty much everybody will happily take the status quo over armed invasion.
And a lot of people are sympathetic with the Chinese, just not their government.
I've only visited Taiwan once and I only have one friend there so perhaps what I'm hearing is not accurate.
CCP is not threatening taiwan because it might go for independence. it is _ALL_ about kicking the US out of the west Pacific. because of that, it is never about what people in Taiwan believe/say/do.
It is only about the military balance of the west Pacific.
> And a lot of people are sympathetic with the Chinese, just not their government.
sympathetic of what?
20 years ago, you might be able to play the "CCP regime repressing the people in China" joke, you can't do it anymore especially in such topic of Taiwan. quality of life is significantly better in literally every aspect in China. Taipei in 2026 is getting more and more like a tier-3 Chinese city in 2016.
Even when a country other than the US does something to benefit Taiwan, Beijing is super offended.
And by sympathetic I mean feeling kinship. And the whole concept of bringing everything down to a matter of wealth is so American.
They said "quality of life". Even if they had said wealth that correlates with quality of life so that wouldn't be a very good gotcha by itself, but they didn't say that.
If you like to say what you think, then trust me, Taipei has much better quality of life. If you see people like Naomi Wu being arrested and gagged just for pointing out a vulnerability in software (which we all agree here is a good thing to do for everyone except the bad guys), that is terrible.
Hardly. It is all about Xi having declared that taking Taiwan by... I think it was 2049, but could be misremembering. Anyway, Xi made that a test of the legitimacy of the CCP, in some very public statements.
So, no, it's not about kicking the US out of the west Pacific. It's about Taiwan, and it's because if they don't, the CCP is illegitimate, by Xi's own word.
If Xi had said "the CCP is illegitimate unless it takes Taiwan by 2025", he would be at real risk of being replaced in 2026. Anyone who opposed him (or just wanted power) would have a perfect reason to replace him.
When Xi makes a goal with a "deadline" he won't live to see, he takes no risk of personally failing to meet the goal. If his successor misses the deadline, he can say things changed, Xi failed to consider factors X,Y,Z, etc.
That's not how the CCP operates though.
They are not a country where the puppets matter so much, like in most of the western countries. You would very very rarely see a leader being critical of their predecessor even if they are changing policies (which Xi Jinping definitely did). Because they are the same party and thus they are attacking themselves. The party is really more important than whoever happens to be at the top. The party is always right. Even when the party is wrong. Which it is not because it's always right.
No, if this promise disappears it will be silently. Never to be mentioned again, or else. It just never happened.
But that doesn't mean they plan to invade Taiwan by then. One common reading of it is that it was a plan to build up the military to that state with a definite goal date (in the same way the "600 ship navy" plan had a goal date).
https://www.reuters.com/world/cia-chief-says-chinas-xi-littl...
I think you are underestimating Chinese nationalism here quite dramatically!
Chinese views of sovereignty are quite independent of other concerns. Take for example their actions against Vietnam in the South China Sea, forcing Vietnam closer to the Philippines and even the US: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...
and related to, with all that holds in an Eastern mindset. My adoptive grandmother was born in Shanghai in 1927. To my knowledge she never returned to Mainland China, partially because her relatives wen Telswhere when the communists came in.
edit: fixed one errant `t`
Certainly, somewhat understandable, given the "military exercises" at the doorstep happening every now and then, but also escalatory and idiotically not a good look either. Some of it is just spewed hatred, not taking a high lane when it comes to ethics.
But at the same time everyone understands that the Taiwanese would destroy the facilities before they fall into Chinese hands
The talent is still there, so they could rebuild, or recruit the talent to work for Chinese mainland fabs instead?
maybe easier said than done but still
It's not impossible, but I feel as though if Trump decides that China is friends and Taiwan is enemies (as he seems to have done with North/South Korea lately) then Taiwanese refugees might not be as eager to move to the US as, say, Canada, Australia, or Europe.
Would you voluntarily work in a country that invaded and taken over yours?
Would you ask the same about Russia recruiting Ukrainians?
Some are.
Some people also want to feed their families and not be unemployed.
P.S. A large number of Ukrainians moved to Russia. Including the ones who wanted to reunite with their relatives. Taiwanese have a lot of relatives on the mainland as well.
Citation very much needed.
This means people that have Ukrainian citizenship, which includes lots of families that were on both sides of the border. It does not mean people who were residents of Ukraine before the war, and decided to move to Russia. It does include the kidnapped children, and surviving people in occupied cities.
TSMC is not something you can rebuild with some brains in front of laptops.
Effectively the semantics are like a game of chicken and hostage combined. Might as well be a Prisoner's Dilemma.
As an American, I found the deference to authority very strange.
Are schoolchildren in the US still required to recite the pledge of allegiance...?
The Supreme Court ruled, in 1943, that it is unconstitutional to compel students to salute the flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-supreme-court/319/624.h...
Strongly pressured, yes.
How is that?
Is there an action movie style self destruct sequence?
> To render inoperable sure, but invaders would surely be able to suss out some of their secrets from the remains.
Yes, but I have a suspicion the Taiwanese plans are a bit more involved than my sledge hammer idea.
Sounds like you've been fed the US anti-China propaganda for the large part of your life as well.
_China doesn't need to invade Taiwan_
1. 50%+ of Taiwan's workforce are white-collar workers [0].
2. There are 3-4 major underwater internet communication hubs in Taiwan [1].
3. There is a substantial opposition in Taiwan that want reunification (~20% of population support directly Li-Wun) [2].
4. China is close to producing industry-grade EUV [3].
China just can:
* Establish a total naval and air blockade of Taiwan using their fleets stationed in Ningbo and Zhanjiang.
* Cut underwater internet cables in those 3 locations.
* Achieve EUV.
They won't need TSMC soon, and with the blockade they can show the world that TSMC is not a reliable supplier.
Within months the political structure of Taiwan is going to crumble, as white-collar workers lose their jobs.
[0] https://www.cbc.gov.tw/dl-215893-af39cb14b0044d1cb05a60864ec...
[2] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3350271/xi-...
[3] https://asiatimes.com/2025/12/made-in-china-euv-machine-targ...
All your points consider what China can do but not how others would respond. Blocking Taiwan when the whole AI economy is running on it will invoke lots of countries to go up in arms. There was a quote from US military that it'd cost less to fight than watch Taiwan fall (invasion or not).
> 4. China is close to producing industry-grade EUV
No where near close. At least not production grade at massive scale.
> * Establish a total naval and air blockade of Taiwan using their fleets stationed in Ningbo and Zhanjiang.
Doesn't work. If they do that the US, JP and others can also blockade around Shanghai, Hong Kong and the other ports.
> They won't need TSMC soon
Taiwan is not just TSMC. There are thousands to millions of things involving Taiwan you're likely not aware of and they might not even be AI or semi related.
US backed off last year when there were talks about protecting Taiwan. They pulled Patriot missiles from Taiwan and South Korea too.
China and Japan have a beef. Considering the atrocities Japan did in China, the conversation won't be friendly.
None of these are good for Taiwan, during the times when its political system is failing.
> No where near close. At least not production grade at massive scale.
It looks like you have knowledge of the status of that super-secret government project. Can you share some details then?
> Doesn't work. If they do that the US, JP and others can also blockade around Shanghai, Hong Kong and the other ports.
US cannot blockade Hormuz, as we've seen. JP cannot do that with their current constitution unless they change it (the current government is on the road to it, though).
What we've also seen is that Chinese fishing fleet had a military blockade exercise [0].
> Taiwan is not just TSMC. There are thousands to millions of things involving Taiwan you're likely not aware of and they might not even be AI or semi related.
All is around semiconductors.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/01/16/world/asia/ch...
>US cannot blockade Hormuz, as we've seen. JP cannot do that with their current constitution unless they change it (the current government is on the road to it, though).
If China really wants to fuck with Taiwan, they had better do it soon while the most incompetent US administration ever to hold office is still there. Because there is change coming to the US and the next president isn't likely to be such a complete moron.
All past elections prove you otherwise.
This is not a fact. This is bullshit trolling.
This pointless internet interaction is over.
Even senile Joe Biden was more competent than the current malicious moron in power.
Russia didn't need to invade Ukraine either.
But nonetheless China is clearly preparing itself to be ready to be able to invade, with aircraft carriers, amphibious assault ships, dual purpose roll-on/roll-off carriers. It doesn't mean it will, but that it wants to be able to.
So basically it will depend on a single dictator's whim if they do or don't.
> Establish a total naval and air blockade of Taiwan using their fleets stationed in Ningbo and Zhanjiang
Which would be considered an act of war, so it's the same scenario again.
> There is a substantial opposition in Taiwan that want reunification (~20% of population support directly Li-Wun)
20% is more than the % of people in the Donbass that wanted unification with Russia, and we can see how well that went. And it wasn't a dangerous amphibious assault against an island with shit terrain.
Arguable, they had to after the 2008 Buharest NATO summit and Ukraine's militarization going forward, and eradication of Russian language and Russian-speaking population in the east.
> Which would be considered an act of war, so it's the same scenario again.
China considers Taiwan their territory, who is there to protect Taiwan? US?
>20% is more than the % of people in the Donbass that wanted unification with Russia
20% plus part of those white-collar workers who are a backbone of the Taiwan's economy and politics and can be left jobless after China achieves EUV and puts TSMC out of monopoly.
Let's be real. Trump demanded TSMC to invest 100B into US factories and they complied [0].
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/03/tsmc-to-announce-100-billion...
How dare the countries threatened by Russia, who had seen how Russia invaded and brutalised multiple countries - Moldova, Checnya, Georgia twice - seek protection from Russia. This totally excuses Russia invading and brutalising again, of course.
> Ukraine's militarization going forward
The country was literally invaded (Crimea and Donbass), what the hell did you or the idiots in the Kremlin expect? That it will just sit and allow Russia to take more of its territory unopposed? That it will become a pliant vassal state again?
> eradication of Russian language and Russian-speaking population in the east
Such eradication that the country elected a Russian speaker to be president, on a platform of reconciliation with Russia. So much so, that his opposition called him a Russian puppet. That guy is Zelenskyy.
I'm sorry, but you're either out of your mind, or have been completely brainwashed. Russia chose to invade multiple of its neighbours, and did unspeakable atrocities every time. The only one to fault for all of this, and everyone around them seeking protection from this, is them. This imperialist nonsense brutality does not belong in the 21st century, and neither does its apologia. And no, I don't care about the whataboutism you're preparing to "defend" these actions with, it's beyond irrelevant. It's what the Russian state has been about since it came into being out of the ruins of the USSR. We should have never treated them as anything else.
That's literally a copy-paste from propaganda pamphlet. Can you back it up?
> The country was literally invaded
You seem to forget the amount of killings Ukraine did there and why it started in the first place.
Why should I discuss that with a person who seems to be unaware of facts?
Back what up? That Russia invaded and destroyed Chechnya? Or Georgia?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Chechen_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Chechen_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grozny_(1999%E2%80%9...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War
What exactly do you want backed up? That countries across Eastern Europe saw how the russians operate and decided they don't want to be destroyed?
> You seem to forget the amount of killings Ukraine did there and why it started in the first place.
What killings did Ukraine make that resulted in russia invading Crimea? Or russia starting the invasion of the Donbass? MH17 maybe? Oh no, wait, that was the russians too.
I would not want to be maintaining a long-term naval blockade while constantly looking over my shoulder worrying about surprise attacks. Everyone knows where you are, and it would give plenty of time for a counter offensive to be planned. The US has something like 50 attack submarines, and a surprise attack from all of them at once would be a nightmare scenario for any fleet.
In the era of drones and missiles having your navy tied down in a blockade like that makes it all the more vulnerable.
US had 10,000 miles of power projection, while China prepared for 100 miles of it for the past 20 years, come on. The answer is EUV alternative that would render TSMC useless.
I understand that majority of people here cannot see the bigger picture, by design.
This whole idea of collapsing everything to some single semi-military geo-political concern is naive and not at all how the world works.
Of course there are people in China who would prefer Xiaomi did all their manufacturing inside China, and there are others who prefer to build stronger economic ties between Taiwan and China to make Taiwan economically dependent on China.
There are others who want Xiaomi to dominate world mobile markets by any means necessary. There are others who want Xiaomi to make the most profit possible, and still others who want Chinese firms to race to match US companies technology on every dimension.
These concerns are all interlinked and play out over years in lots of micro decisions.
How do you make one country into one country? It's already one country and is treated as such by even countries that consider China an adversary
Your link does not say what you think it does. My guess is you read the first sentence and saw "one-China police" and stopped. But the US's one-China policy is not the same thing as China's one-China principle.
The US's one-China policy is that (continental) China is a single China governed by the PRC. It's silent on Taiwan. But, considering the laws we have on the books declaring our commitment to ensuring the sovereignty of Taiwan, it's a hard row to hoe to get to "the US considers Taiwan to be territory the PRC has a right to control."
The US has an unofficial relationship with Taiwan simply to shut the CCP up. It's like when your partner is complaining about something you did, silence doesn't mean you agree that you messed up. Sometimes it just means you don't want a fight right now.
Oh really?
https://2021-2025.state.gov/countries-areas/taiwan/
>The 1979 U.S.-P.R.C. Joint Communique switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing. In the Joint Communique, the U.S. recognized the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal government of China, acknowledging the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China.
https://2021-2025.state.gov/u-s-relations-with-taiwan/
>The United States approach to Taiwan has remained consistent across decades and administrations. The United States has a longstanding one China policy, which is guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the three U.S.-China Joint Communiques, and the Six Assurances. We oppose any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side; we do not support Taiwan independence
Doesn't sound like silence to me.
>But, considering the laws we have on the books declaring our commitment to ensuring the sovereignty of Taiwan, it's a hard row to hoe to get to "the US considers Taiwan to be territory the PRC has a right to control."
You're moving the goal posts. Sovereignty isn't the same as being a country. States in the US have some sovereignty and their own governance and international relations too, but it wouldn't be correct to say that the US consists of 50 independent countries.
Also, using the word right sounds a bit like muddying the waters. You could argue the United States government doesn't have the right to control their land, as it has been stolen from the indigenous people. But that doesn't mean United States is not an independent country that controls the area within its borders.
I'm not so sure. I would say that perhaps it's an indication that the CCP is ok with the status quo.
The PR Chinese might be able to take Taiwan's land, but they can't conceivable take Taiwan's economy, at least not by force.
That's quite the odd statement. I don't think that it's in anyone's best interests to have a single country control access to chips. It might be in the US's interests to keep everyone out if the field, but the US is a single country among 195 countries.
And isn't the US's dominant ideology all about competition?
dumping is always bad.
It's definitely different when the player doesn't even have to play by the market. Comparing US companies and Chinese companies is not apples to apples.
This is so stupid. China itself uses the "dominate and corral" model for their industries, and had severe tariffs to grow their various industrial bases, such as automotive.
If they go too far to impose their system, we stop buying :)
This is geopolitics 101; your fantasy version is decades out of date.
It is very much harder to do now. There is a lot of friction introduced now to it.
Kafka himself would be proud if their unlocking process[0], but technically sure, they allow it
> Press "Apply for unlocking" at exactly 12:00 AM GMT+8 (pressing it too late will cause the "application quota limit reached" error. Use this website to check the time) "Account Error" might show up. If that happens, retry after 10 days
[0] https://github.com/realdtn2/xiaomi-unlocking-rooting-guide
Take a look at the PostmarketOS Device Wiki[1], you'll see that even phones released 10+ years ago (like Xiaomi Redmi 4) still do not have 100% functionality.
In saying that, in this era of LLMs and reverse-engineering, it may not be long before some of these blockers are reverse-engineered and we might end up with a fully functional Linux distro on older phones like this.
Now this mostly isn't a big issue on the desktop/x86 world, because most drivers are open source, except for some exceptions like certain Broadcom drivers and old nVidia drivers. nVidia used to be a massive headache to deal with because the driver would frequently break with kernel updates, but thankfully that's mostly a thing of the past after they released an open driver, relegating most of the proprietary code to their GSP firmware.
Also, PCs and the x86 platform in general are much more open and hacker-friendly, making it relatively easier to reverse-engineer drivers, so as a result we also have a good chunk of drivers maintained by the community.
So the lack of ABI/API stability isn't a big issue generally in the desktop space.
Now in the embedded/ARM space however, things are very different. Unfortunately due to the precedence set by Google, Apple and earlier mobile vendors, chipset vendors generally don't release their sources; even their architecture documentation is closely guarded and hard to obtain, never mind the sources. And the chipset themselves (like the camera/ISP) are tiny black boxes and hard to debug and reverse engineer. So unless this situation changes (ie, official Linux support from the manufacturers themselves), a simple unlocked bootloader means nothing.