For now.
The majority of solar panels are made in China (85%), and they plan to invade Taiwan in just a few years, possibly as soon as 2027, at which point either we let them take control of AI chip production or defend Taiwan and cut ourselves off from the source of almost all manufactured products, and especially solar panels.
Can you share your sources for that valuable intelligence? Military analysts would really be interested to learn that. Or is that form the same manufactured scaremongering genre as "Iran is 6 weeks away from building nuclear weapons" and "Iraq has WMDs" to justify endless defense spending, military interventions and warmongering.
> at which point either we let them take control of AI chip production
You can't just commandeer semi fabs like you're carjacking a Hyundai for a joyride. Semi fabs need constant parts and on-prem staff and always-on telemetry from ASML & friends to run. If that's gone, you're left with a very expensive warehouse that can't do shit.
https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-CHINA/TAIWAN-INVASION/z...
https://www.ft.com/content/36a00ba4-6178-4267-9786-3e0b59abe...
https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-taiwan-military-naval-...
> "Iran is 6 weeks away from building nuclear weapons"
It is the breakout time, not the schedule.
It is incredible to me how pervasive the misunderstanding of this statement is!
I've had real-life conversations with project managers just like this:
PM: "How long would this project take?"
Me: "One month."
... two weeks later ...
PM: "How long would the project take to finish?"
Me: "One month."
PM: "You said that two weeks ago! It should only take two weeks to finish!"
Me: "Why would you think that? We never started the project! It wasn't approved. You didn't approve it, personally. The effort is four weeks. If you approve and we start today, it will still take that long to complete."
... two more weeks later ...
PM: "Why isn't the project finished!? You said one month a month ago!"
Me: "... wat?"
That's not the same thing as planning to invade in 2027, though. Militaries can need a capability without an imminent specific plan to actually use it. See the US's amphibious capacity. See nukes.
And why wouldn't they build that type of stuff for self defense? Which country doesn't do self defense? Have you seen how huge China's coast is and how many islands they have to defend?
Firstly, this take is poorly thought out from a facts perspective, needlessly alarmist and mostly just FUD.
The fact is that China has thousands of islands in its territory already. So how else would their military be able to DEFEND those islands WITHOUT "a massive fleet of amphibious landing craft" capable of landing troops and material on islands that they own? It doesn't mean they 100% WILL invade Taiwan just because they have them, like you claim.
Secondly, the three news sources you then quoted are just your typical clickbaity mainstream media with nothing to lose if they are wrong in their alarmist predictions or just blatantly lie like they often do to manipulate people and financial markets, especially given their incentives and ties to politics and the wealthy elite.
So telling people on HN with 100% certainty China will invade Taiwan in the near future just because you read something about China's drills of Taiwan invasion in the MSM, just gets you more egg on your face that nobody can take your takes on this seriously. I'm 100% sure that the US Navy also regularly has drills on nuking China and Russia from their submarines, that doesn't mean they're actually planning to do it anytime soon with no provocation. So please, stop turning what is bland vanilla news into alarmist FUD.
Chinas has hundreds (not thousands) of islands in its territory, which has increased from 287 in 2019 to 431 in 2026. This is not "defense".
> nobody can take your takes on this seriously.
Russia moved mobile crematoriums up to the Ukraine border in February 2022, and people still dismissed the chances of their invasion as vanishingly unlikely.
Dismissing an obvious military buildup from a country that has plainly stated their intentions is an error.
With the argument being ... ?
Your second paragraph assumes China doesn’t have all the espionage necessary, and hasn’t proven their capabilities on their own labs.
Like the Chinese are just sans neocortex or something.
It feels like MAD is eroding, because at one point the reaction to China invading Taiwan would obviously have been a nuclear exchange.
There is no way anyone would nuke China if/when they invade Taiwan the same way nobody nuked Russia when they invaded Ukraine. And Russia is a lot less relevant globally than China.
It'll be another conventional war like the current Russo-Ukrainian one where the west will sanction China and support Taiwan.
During operation a string of solar cells is under a pretty high voltage. It makes sodium ions from the covering glass infiltrate slowly into the silicon, potentially ruining the p-n junction ("potential-induced degradation", PID). Usually an industry-grade panel controller applies a reverse voltage during night time, to drive the sodium ions back from the silicon. A rogue controller might instead apply the same voltage, accelerating PID instead of reverting it (and kill it in several months). A really insidious producer might add a strip of extra sodium-rich material near the normal electric conductors, which would be triggered by voltage higher than normal operation to flood the silicon with sodium (and kill it in several days).