2) Taiwan is not China. We are going to break the rest of China up because Xi decided to consolidate power instead of steward the distributed power he inherited.

3) The USA isn't in trouble at all; we will expand our industries, inflate our currency and strengthen it so demand globally grows as Russia, EU and China falter.

4) China took HK almost 3 decades early so why should anyone believe their word on territorial respect.

Companies can't survive in a peak world without manufacturing crap. Sell more because your tools break.

So now they are looking at how to do that under the premise of eternal growth:

They will try to lock us down in the hardware = deprecate older hardware and force you to move to never software with TLS 1.3.

That has never succeded because you can always hack everything = They will try to rent out the accounts.

They allready started that process, but I'm not buying it. I have all the software I need under permanent license.

Since processors now have peaked, everyone is buying all the computers they can, the really smart ones are buying low energy devices like Raspberry but 1151 Xeon is also sold out.

Anything manufactured today will probably have hardware kill-switches or programmed obsolescence. For companies: "To not lock your customer down for eternity is suicide"...

Edit: Loving the downvotes without comment...

If clean energy sources are strategic, yeah the US should do the work to protect its ability to utilise it regardless of it being oil, solar, wind, nuclear. Doesn't mean the state needs to own those ventures, just that they should put in the effort to fund investment and growth in strategic areas.

Energy/money is also the solution, so if you see it as the problem then you are probably missing the specific details.

Furthermore, the makers of Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto don't owe you the ability to use outdated OSes if you're using a service they maintain. They probably didn't intend to break your workflow, and instead wanted to make their own stuff more secure.

If you're not a W10 fan, you could always run Minecraft on Linux. I think GTA V works on there as well. Either way, there's an out.

>M1-2 are brittle and controlled, the opposite of open/repairable etc.

We have reached the point where we cannot have removable ram for technical reasons. M chips get a a lot of their performance from excellent memory bandwidth. Move on from this thought process. The software is still gives you more control compared to Windows and thats what really matters, not the arch that it is running.

>If you don't have this hardware, you'll get something that will last max 10 years.

10 years is enough time for the next computing paradigm shift. It is great that MacOS lets us hold onto the old world for 10 more years(hopefully).

>USA has banned China from manufacturing without having a replacement.

Thats a temporary issue. They mostly made low end junk silicon anyway.

I’m no libertarian market wacko, and I think it’s important to have decentralized production and as a planet we probably jumped the shark with centralizing Asia as the production hub for manufacturing and fabrication. But I’m dubious DPA etc are sufficient measures.

My point though was low prices and softening demand is NOT helpful as the prior poster asserted. It hurts the effort because the lack of margin and scale means only fiat production is possible, with poor long term outcomes.

Intel used to make a processor with AMD graphics and 4GB HBM2 (Core i7-8809G).

- https://japan-forward.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/JF-Grap...

Source:

- https://japan-forward.com/editorial-chinas-missile-tantrum-t...

In Russian these are called “lamps”, not “tubes”.

On the other side, the US obviously wants to see a war between the two side of the strait. And the US is actually prepareing for it.

a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Again, it's simple to say on a whim that China can go from building a lot of cheap electronics to building very complex microprocessors. But that doesn't change the hurdles or the reality.

Also keep in mind that if anything gets in the way of developing these processes - more supply chain breakdown, access to raw materials required to fabricate processors is unavailable or constrained, or China is dealing with any other number of issues along that path it will only take longer. Then realize that during this period of time the rest of the processes are enhanced and iterated leaving China even further behind.

So at the time China can fabricate chips that are outdated today, the world will be 20+ years down the road from where we are right now. The more you dig into all of the things that are needed for China to catch up the more it's apparent that it very well may not happen.

Gelsinger thinks x86's days are numbered. So Intel's historical moat of designing and manufacturing x86 chips is going away.

So now it's more compelling to treat design and manufacturing as separate business concerns:

- For potential foundry customers, it reduces fears that Intel will give higher priority to fab'ing its own chips.

- It frees Intel's chip designers to design chips without needing to assume they'll be built at Intel's foundries. E.g., they can design chips for TSMC's process if that would result in a better product.

And given all these factors, I suspect Gelsinger and the Intel board of directors are planning to separate the design and manufacturing functions into separate businesses. (Either practically speaking by limiting their interaction within Intel, or literally by making them separate companies.)

"Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, told one group that she saw the island’s tech prowess as a means of shoring up support for its democracy. Calling economic security a “pillar” of national security, she said Taiwan was willing to work with partners to build sustainable supply chains for what she called “democracy chips.”

> https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/29/technology/taiwan-chips.h...

This is hardly an "out-there" take, too.

Why are you so quick to dismiss being protective of such an important resource as a motivation to protect Taiwan?

Nobody wants that.

You are right that those semi companies do not need the government investments to build fabs. However, those fabs materialize overseas, depending on overseas supply chains. The EU and US regions want to build out more of the supply chain domestically, for strategic reasons. Those governments could simply legislate to impose heavy restrictions, but that hurts the competitiveness of the companies involved. And so, they combine that stick with a carrot, which is the government investments. You can already see increased restrictions on the semi supply chain in China, timed right after the CHIPS act passed.

You can easily guess what the purpose of the program is.

How so?

It's been done many times before (weapons, food, etc.) and always leads to the exact same result: garbage heaps and no available resources when they're actually needed.

Offering companies grants and favors to encourage building real, sustainable, on-shore businesses has a much higher likelihood of success.

You don't really want over production, you only want the factories and employees who know how to do the job.

That's the USA's mistake.

China's capitalist zones with very low taxes attracted all the factories because at the same time the USA was increasing taxes on the factories. What is left in the USA? Nothing. How do you wage war when you dont hold cards?

Yes, absolutely. Russia, 60m people (or how much is it? More even) notwithstanding, is essentially a petrostate. It was too hard to try to get the population-driven productive elements to compete against the easy resource money.

I mean, Norway is right fucking there. This war is on them, entirely, for failing to prepare for the inevitable day when the natural resources are no longer enough to bankroll the entire state.

But, doing it _now_ is not possible without major political upset, so the major political players, not wanting to be 'upset' out of a window (hey, you live by the sword, you die by the sword, I'm sure the political elite is aware of the usual way to deal with higher ups that need to be lesser higher up: By taking that literally) - start a war.

China doesn’t have to storm beaches to be within shooting range.

If Taiwan were an easy conquest it would have been conquered. It’s not impossible that China would attempt some sort of belligerence, but Taiwan is capable responding to any threat with enough firepower to deter such actions.

Apple runs an Asia-first strategy these days, they are divesting from China at top speed (whether that's due to sanction threats, the risk of operating in dictatorships, raising wages in China or a combination of that is up for debate). It doesn't make much sense for Apple economically and logistically to use US-made products as they have to be shipped across the ocean to the assembly plants.

I bought a few of them a while back and have only recently managed to integrate one of them into a really basic project. They tried to make some kind of middle ground between an ESP and an Arduino, while providing an incredibly buggy MicroPython build and no Arudino IDE integration. Some of that's been corrected, but it still remains this all rounder thing that's never the best choice for the application.

Sadly giving a search engine too many words can stop it from even searching, probably because that would cause a scan or result in a very time and computer/resource intensive search. So it doesn't even bother searching and tells you it couldn't find anything.

Imagine this use case. User searches for a video that costs Youtube royalty fees and is not monetized. Do you prioritize that in your return results or some other video that makes your business money instead of costing it?

Same thing with the Spotify Company playlists and recommendations versus user generated ones. Spotify's seems to include lesser quality, lower royalty songs now even though that is not what I want and it knows it. But unlike Google, I only go to Spotify BECAUSE of the quality of the songs it recommends me. Now that it's priority is first lower royalty songs over songs it things I would like the most I have no incentive to stay.

Underrated insight

There’s also drones, communications systems, electronic warfare systems, jets etc…

It's not disingenous and it's not racist as I've laid it out. Facts are facts. I've never discounted the fact that China can't make electronics or that it can't, as a nation state, build satellites. What it's manufacturing sector, the bulk of China's financial success couldn't do was make a ball point pen as it requires precision manufacturing. That was not in China's wheelhouse until 2017. There are countries that excel in precision manufacturing at scale. You're conflating some very macro things.

> China has in a very short time-span gone from mostly agriculture to being in the top three in many (most?) high tech areas.

Define "high tech". The top 5 chip manufacturers in the world are: AMD (US), Intel (US), Broadcom (US), TSMC (CN --> Taiwan), NVidia (US). I'm curious if that helps you understand, better, what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about run of the mill electronics manufacturers. If you round out the top 12 - China isn't there: STM, NXP, Micron, LRC, Applied Materials, Texas Instruments, and Qualcomm - none of which are Chinese corporations. These are the companies that know how to build chips. Where is China in this mix? Because these are the companies you need to build high-tech things. Putting an iPhone together is not the same thing as building the chips in them.

> But in short can you explain why the US is using insane amounts of energy to slow down China if they are so totally incapable? Why do we need a completely new doctrine and pivot of the navy to be sailing around an utterly incapable and un-concerning China?

Yes. TSMC. They are the dominant, mass volume, manufacturer of these chips today. The US supply chain relies on this right now. Chip building isn't like retail where you can throw up a store in a few weeks and are off to the races. Building what TSMC has takes time. The US is buying time. That's why you slow China down and keep the issue of Taiwan at bay.

It is whether the democracies of the world will abandon democracy and allow dictators to take over their societies by threat of force or force.

If we are not both better armed, better prepared, and willing to fight, we might as well hand over the key to Putin, Xi, and Un, and live under their dictatorships.

If we want freedom, we must risk war, and if the threat is nuclear war, then that most of all must be faced down. There is a reason we don't negotiate with terrorists or blackmailers — because if we negotiate and let them gain from terrorism or blackmail, we get a short period of peace before they try it again, along with every other wannabe dictator who can get their hands on some weapons. This all applies even more strongly with nukes.

It sucks, but there is no other choice.

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220805-chinese-missi...

That happened during the Pelosi trip in August, and the jingoists were angry it didn't go further. The likelihood of an effective air/sea embargo on Taiwan is more likely than an initial invasion.

Either way, you probably meant that 13 nations have full and formal diplomatic relationships with Taiwan. Which, btw does not include the US, Japan or any EU nations.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

If you don't believe in human made climate change pls say so directly so I can ignore you

"One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiang_Kai-shek#Mass_deaths_un...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_Republic_o...:

Following the ROC government's retreat to Taiwan on 7 December 1949, the Temporary Provisions together with martial law made the country an authoritarian one-party state despite the constitution. Democratization began in the 1980s. Martial law was lifted in 1987, and in 1991 the Temporary Provisions were repealed.

ROC has been democratic since the 01990s, but it was an authoritarian dictatorship that killed millions of its own people at the time the Communists drove it out of the mainland (only to exceed its atrocities with their own) and for decades afterwards.

I look around where I am and wonder why aren't more of us wearing masks?

[0]https://www.csis.org/analysis/chinas-slow-motion-financial-c... [1] https://news.usni.org/2021/01/22/chinese-navy-faces-overseas... [2] https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3157385/c... [3] https://www.world-energy.org/article/20509.html

They scream at me when they think I'm stealing (Any human being doing that would instantly be reprimanded by a manager), they have tiny platforms where I can't even fit my groceries and heaven forbid if I do something the machine doesn't like, an attendant needs to come unfuck it for me.

The best thing about them is that I can do some work for the store for free as part of my shopping. I can't wait for the next grocery innovation of having the customers stock the shelves from the backroom before they can fill a sack with onions.

This posture change will keep pace broadly with the American domestic chip fab industry.

So support via the former will always be the more tenable position for a democracy.

No one wanted the war, many knew it would be horrible, and yet it led to the most nightmarish collective human experience in human history.

We are in a multi-polar world now, Trump pointed out and many people are starting to agree, about whether or not the US really should be so closely aligned with Europe, NATO will probably stick around but it might not be enough. Meanwhile India has happily agreed to buy all the Russian oil that Europe isn't, which is done to spit in the face of the sanctions imposed on Russia. The mutli-polar world right now is US, India, China, EU, and Russia which is still a regional power, each of which have different interests.

The problem is China and the EU are facing huge demographic shortfalls in the next 30 years that will pose existential threats to their society, Russia is in the same boat. The EU is having this problem addressed to a certain extent through immigration but the nationalistic racist attitudes of the Chinese people make this a less palatable option for them. It is likely that the demographic cliff is going to continue to stress Chinese society to the breaking point until it snaps and begins an international incident that could quickly escalate to a global war. The best thing the US could do to preserve it's interests is do whatever we need to to schmooze up to India and cement an alliance with them, as they represent the best regional challenger to China and if they end up on the side of the CCP will cause huge problems as at that point a Bejing-Delhi alliance will be able to exert control over 1/3 > of the world's population. (This assumes they will be able to control all of Southeast Asia through soft and hard power)

"Peak tech" is two words I just pulled out of my arse an hour ago.

Let's define it together.

For me it's a palpable sentiment not a definition. But some people here seem to "get it".

The "tech industry" is not just an activity, it's a culture. Many of us, including (particularly?) developers are increasingly fed-up and disappointed by the direction digital technology is going. Not because we dislike technology, but because of what a minority are doing with it to gain power and wealth to the detriment of everyone else.

I don't think things will change for those investors who are smart enough to see the writing on the wall and switch (as they are doing) to physical technologies. FWIW I love the startup mind-set.

But this cynical flogging of surveillance capitalism, screwing over users, social control and smartphone bandwagon has been sticking in people's throats way beyond this community for some time.

The pain and anxiety equals or outweighs the perceived benefits - not just to a few geeks - but to people like my parents, siblings and neighbours.

That's "peak tech" for me.

People have been saying this about technology for as long as technology has existed.

Better tech is how humans (all of them - rather than the few) get more space to reflect and live outside.

The Ancient Greek philosophers used to say this about writing and reading

"Star wars" is feasible with reusable launch to orbit vehicles.

some wholesale clubs apparently counter this by randomly auditing every cart as you leave, but that seems to leave the whole thing only marginally more efficient than traditional checkout

And in terms of nation states caring, that's also incorrect because Taiwan is a linchpin of US Pacific foreign policy and for the US to do nothing or "not care" about Taiwan being invaded would signal to allies in the region that they cannot count on the United States and that they should find their own defense arrangements. It would de facto kick the US out of the Pacific and end global hegemony overnight.

Frankly, Taiwan is a big fucking deal w.r.t US, Japanese, and Australian national defense concerns and is a big deal to other nations such as New Zealand.

I would go as far as to say that US Army + Marines + Navy could not land on Taiwan without suffering multiple brigades of attrition AFTER at least a year long blockade and air campaign. It is that hard.

PRC has to surpass US in GDP, then spend 10-20 years of US level military spending, then maybe.

That being said, ASML is 100 percent reliant on US Government research for their EUV breakthroughs, which is why the USG can tell them who they can and can’t sell to.

Taiwan does have fairly good stocks of weapons and ammo. It's also great terrain for fighting a defensive guerilla war. It'd be China's roleplay of "Russia in Afghanistan".

The difference between ally and vassal seems like one of alignment. Right now Japan and the US are quite aligned, but were alignment different, I think the status would be as well.

The War is just the needle that is contributing to the massive bubble popping

Is there possible anything democratic without free speech?

( Speaking of which. In the Soviet Union all western media - newspapers and magazines - was put under the lock. Foreign propaganda. Sounds familiar? Only trusted persons could get the key. Funny thing is all former Party media - newspapers and magazines from former years - were put under the same lock. Protocols of former Party congresses too. Dangerous, same as foreign propaganda. And now I see this:

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/youtube-demonetizes-tk-content

YouTube demonetized a video showing years of audio and video clips, tweets, and headlines produced by the Party politicians at about and after 2016 - nothing else.

So we may be not there yet but we are sure sailing in the same direction ).

We produce more oil domestically than we consume.

I would think the opposite to be true.

How do you attempt to apply to game theory to a situation where the other party is completely irrational? It seems impossible to me.

Observe that "the world" will not be helping Taiwan. India won't. Russia won't. Brazil won't. Nigeria won't. Pakistan won't. Bangladesh won't. Nigeria won't. You get the drill. US will, and probably Europe too, but why assume that these will 1) be able to defeat China in a conventional war in its own back yard, and 2) will even try to do so?

I kinda think I should write an essay about the life of a software engineer in the Soviet Union. It is always interesting to get reactions of un-believe to simple truths, known to everybody with the same "living experience". What stops me - my English is bad and Russians know all this already. Still, let me do what I can.

So, software engineers and the food supply. I worked as a software engineer in a biological research center. I've participated in the practice described below from 1979 to 1991, 1991 being the last year of the planned economy. Each employee has a quota to be fulfilled in the collective farm fields, like 20 days a year. Each morning, weekends including, a big number of buses was coming to the city center. Our research institution was assigned one bus. We packed in it and were driven into the fields. There was a quota to be done by each until afternoon: planting, tending or harvesting depending on the season. In the afternoon like "before lunch" buses arrived to take us back to the city. You were free from work this day, but paid in full. You were also paid for the work done in the fields. Twice paid for a half of a day's work.

No one was exempt from the farm work quota, nor government workers, nor defense contractors from a county seat 20 miles away.

So the whole system was not especially cruel, but extremely ineffective, like the life in the late Soviet Union in general - do not forget these buses with their fuel, some of them bringing people from 20 miles away - for half a day's work.

( In 1990 yours truly organized and participated in an economic experiment, reducing some of the costs. Instead of giving a quota to each co-worker, we've organized a team of volunteers, spent whole days in the field and were done with the quota for the whole institution in a week or so. This was a back-breaking affair, but earned a good money. I've sent a letter to the county newspaper with a proud name Kommunist, describing the "experiment". They published it, but they also published "letters from workers" naming me "the enemy of the people". )

Some misconceptions to correct, if I may.

>in the 1940s, when people were packed into train cars to bring in the harvest

Incarceration rates in Stalin times were less than incarceration rates in present Texas or Luisiana. So not much could have been done using inmates labor only.

>dedicated class of kolhozniks that were paid next to nothing,

Kolhozniks in my time were paid 2-3 times more than a software engineer. Not that was much, but still.

>and couldn't really leave the countryside for better jobs in the cities.

This practice ended in 1965. Free movement of people was restricted in general though, meaning you have to jump through some stupid obstacles to move, but absolutely possible.

>I would pay good money to see the likes of Peter Thiel spend a few weeks a year picking strawberries

This is a strange wish. If Thiel is a good person, he will work along with you, yes. But if he is the bad guy like I guess you've implied - he will be a supervisor over you packing strawberries. Some things never change with a change of a political system.

This is really more of an engineering problem, you need more cycles for quality and reliability. But it's not something unsurmountable. Intel had no reason to try hard enough, Intel is never going to get sanctioned.

'Necessity is the mother of all innovation' might come to play here. If it comes down to living vs dying, people go to no ends to make things happen.

Zeiss covers their mirrors and lenses. The smoothness is extreme: "If you were to enlarge such a mirror to the size of Germany, the largest unevenness – the Zugspitze, so to speak – would be a whole 0.1 millimeters high."

Then they have positioning / tilt accuracy.

"If one of these EUV mirrors were to redirect a laser beam and aim it at the Moon, it would be able to hit a ping pong ball on the Moon’s surface."

What they don't say is what the yield is on these. I've heard they have to try and make X to get y that can hit all the specs.

In the machines themselves didn't they have to build in both an electron microscope and an atomic force microscope for defect detection?

And then the environment they operate in is terrible from a wavelength absorption energy / contamination (tin?) issues etc.

The semi industry is known for being very boom/bust so it’s best not to scale up too quick lest it kill your company.

At some point you're running into actual, real constraints, real bottlenecks in the supply chain, that will take years to resolve. You can't just scale up on short timeframes, no more than you can make a baby in a shorter time frame.

Can you list the other warm-water ports used by the Russian Navy? Here's a paper on the subject from the Air Force Journal on European, Middle Eastern, and African Affairs: https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/JEMEAA/Journals/...

>>>It is only second in popularity to "Russia invaded Ukraine to prevent NATO on its borders" which can also be trivially disproved by finding Estonia or Latvia on the map...

While technically true, there is a big difference between the Estonian/Latvian border, and the Ukrainian one. I discussed this 7 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30513745

What media?

In the beginning most reporting was that it would be over in a week. Then Russia had that little blunder with their first offensive. Then again most reporting was that the russian artillery steamroller would squash the Ukrainians. Now most media favor the Ukrainians due to their recent successes. Also goals and frames of reference changed. In the beginning winning for Ukraine was not letting Russia roflstomping them. Now it is throwing all russian military out of their country.

No one outside of China thinks his stubborn refusal to abandon the failed Zero Covid policy is in any way a good idea. Everyone sees it as a stupid and irrational face-saving action.

When people don't like to discuss what they call platitudes is because they will not benefit. The US has endless problems, with 400+ years of racism, slavery, denial of institutional racism, then our destruction and the big lie about Iraq, and finally Afghanistan had a different situation but still managed to screw that up. My friend who recently moved back to Taiwan to retire will probably also have an interesting viewpoint on such things. "Please don't kill me, China" might describe his views. He thinks (hopes?) there won't be a war because the west will help protect Taiwan.

Edit - the us has a lot more years than 200 of racism, updated that comment.

I honestly think there is 100% chance that if China invaded Taiwan today, the US would declare war and send troops to defend Taiwan. In contrast, I think there is >0% chance that the US would not declare war on Russia if they did a (tactical) nuclear attack in Ukraine.

Don't semiconductors represent a significant military advantage? Would we really want China to control the worlds semiconductor supply?

The primary reason that we're concerned about semiconductor fab concentration in Taiwan is that China has consistently stated that it is going to invade Taiwan at some point (and that could be 2049 or in a few years for all we know). This is completely outside of any hypothetical scenarios of who lobs cruise missiles at who during WW3.

You can make the point that relying on semiconductor manufacturing outside of your country/coalition is a bad idea for military self-sufficiency, and I would agree, but that's a much more diffuse risk than the very specific scenario that is driving the CHIPS act and concern about fab concentration in Taiwan.

It would take a matter of days until they had massive internal protests. Hungry people topple governments in hours.

Loss of TSMC would result in chips shortage, but not when it comes to critical and military infrastructure.

There's a lot of resources at stake, and semiconductors are just one part of the whole.

TSMC chips aren't critical, considering that ASML can also deliver the same equipment to US... and cut off China from their equipment. (or sabotage in critical cases)

There's a myriad reasons, why US would probably would send in military to protect Taiwan. But it's not going to be "just because TSMC"

That gives us good reason to hope that China will keep behaving that way. We can keep up the deterrence, China can keep on blustering, and nothing bad actually happens. That would indeed be a great result.

Indeed, seems like a most likely scenario.

Well that was a sarcastic joke at the end. The US has not made any threats to Japan since after the bombing. The other countries listed are a different story though.

Russia: I think you have forgotten that the Kuril Islands are still contested territory between Japan and Russia. Russia's same policy is there that they will retaliate if their territories are "attacked." The exact same line with Ukraine. Putin has suggested he would take out Japan and (South) Korea quickly as they are the US's main launching points of an attack. Getting them out of the war quickly gives Russia a serious advantage and the US a serious disadvantage. This is ongoing and has been in discussion since the Cold War. Policies have not shifted on this. Russia has actively been violating international nuclear armament treaties and this has been big news since 2014. So, current.

China: Has been much more explicit and aggressive, stating that they will nuke Japan until they unconditionally surrender if they even send a single troop to defend Taiwan[1]. This video is 2021. They have also made similar threats to Australia after a deal with the US for nuclear powered subs (which would not have nuclear weapons) saying that any nuclear nation is not immune from nuclear attack.

North Korea: idk, last week when they launched their test missile directly over Japan?

I get that searching with respect to Russia might be difficult right now because everything is focused on Ukraine and Google overfits search results. But this has been in military discussion for decades. Maybe it is just saber rattling, but these are still things that have been said.

[1] https://twitter.com/jenniferzeng97/status/141497128516000563...

They are still growing, they are still getting stronger, but for how long? Meanwhile 70% of Taiwanese residents now identify as Taiwanese rather than Chinese?

If they wait for that percentage to climb, and for TSMC to diversify fabs to other places? The cost to take Taiwan is going up, and the prize for taking it is falling with no reason to expect inflections in either. If they don't take it now, there is really no point taking it at all.

Rationally speaking, there probably already isn't any point in taking it. It would tank exports and speed the adoption of local manufacturing elsewhere. All to get a temporary stranglehold on chip supply? What would they do with those chips? They are already far too export dominated. They need consumers to reduce their exports. If they want to win the long game, let their 1% give half their wealth to educating knowledge workers to buy their manufacturing rather than exporting it.

That's not what "the right to life" means. There are lots of policy decisions which have tradeoffs that result in more or less life lost. For example, the government could require that all car engines have a maximum speed of 25 MPH. That would empirically reduce the # of lives lost in automobile accidents, but society has judged the tradeoff (in terms of convenience, transportation time/cost, etc.) to not be worth it -- and that tradeoff does not constitute "violating the right to life".

I therefore hardly think your reports are true, or right.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111779/coronavirus-deat...

Ah yes, China, comes to the top of the list when I think of protectors of human life. One-child policies, welding people into their apartment buildings, corralling them into COSTCOs [1] like they're farm animals being loaded into a semi-truck. Such benevolence.

> Or have a lot of us so internalized anti-China propaganda that we're no longer able to think logically?

Nah, more likely you have been drinking the pro-China propaganda like a 7-11 Big Gulp.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Costco/comments/xgvlm6/video_of_peo...

You are moving the goalposts again. OP stated that Russia don't have any warmwater ports outside Crimea which is obviously incorrect.

> I think they were completely blindsided by Finland abandoning its long-standing neutrality, and have very few tools in their toolbox to leverage.

They could sign a peace agreement with Ukraine and quickly move their armies north no attack Finland, no? I mean, if Russia _really_ considered having (more?) borders with a NATO-member an existential threat (like they always pretend when discussing Ukraine in that context), then that would make total sense.

> Even when Putin had Ukraine as a borderline vassal state they were bitching about NATO expansion in their near abroad. Some of these arguments were made in the US Congress before Putin even came to power. [4] In particular, skip to the comments by Jonathan Dean and Michael Mandelbaum.

Well, Ukraine offered to commit to neutrality multiple times during peace negotiations in February and March, but Russia rejected the proposals and proceed with annexing more Ukrainian lands. Isn't it by now settled that they were just using NATO boogieman as a pretext for trying to (re)build their empire?

> It doesn't matter what you or I think about tank rushes, what matters is what the Russians think about tank rushes. [5] In case you missed it, they initiated this invasion with a multi-axis armored blitz towards Kiev combined with an air assault to secure a nearby Aerial Point of Debarkation.

Which failed spectacularly and kinda proves my point?

Also, they assumed that after initial missile barrage on Ukraine military assets they will achieve complete air superiority which didn't happen. I don't think anyone expects NATO to quickly achieve air superiority in Russian airspace, including Russia's own military analysts.

> The qualifier "of a nuclear superpower" doesn't add much to the conversation.

Of course it does! Russian nuclear doctrine permits them to conduct the first strike when "existence of Russian state is in danger", so they will most likely just tactical nuke the shit out of (hypothetical) NATO grouping on their border that is in the process of assuming attack formations. This also coincides nicely with their "escalate to de-escalate" playbook.

> Of the major nuclear powers, only India has a capital closer to an adversarial border than Russia (I don't count Pakistan or Israel as "superpowers")....and India maintains an exceptionally large tank fleet, and has fought some of the largest post-WW2 tank engagements between their capital and their border with Pakistan.

I have no knowledge of India's or Pakistan's nuclear doctrines. Do they permit first strike?

> Pretty sure ad hominems are against HN guidelines, but since you wanna go there...

Where is ad hominem exactly? Your portrayal of the start of WW2 makes you look on either misinformed or malicious (more on your talking points later). The fact that in next paragraph you are seemingly making U-turn on that doesn't change the formulation of your previous message.

> Oh? What "alliance" was that, specifically? As always, the devil is in the details. There were only two signatories to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact: the Soviet Union and Germany. The Soviets had a bilateral agreement for the partition of Eastern Europe. That made them "co-belligerents", not "allies". They never signed any treaty with the Axis at large (for example, the Pact of Steel or the Tripartite Pact). They submitted a revised proposal for joining the Tripartite Pact to Germany which was quietly ignored as preparations for Operation Barbarossa were already underway. At no point in time was the USSR allied with Italy, Romania (14 divisions, almost 10% of the invading forces), Slovakia, Finland, or Hungary.

You are arguing semantics here (co-belligerent vs ally, etc.) while seemingly agreeing with me that USSR was one of the states that started the whole WW2 on the side of "evil western allies".

> TL;DR = Read more. Condescend less.

Well, you keep repeating Russian propaganda talking points and make it look like they were just peacefully minding their own business in thirties and then sneaky westerners cowardly back-stabbed them in forties. This is one of their favorite tropes how the whole world is against them and keep trying to either attack or contain them for no reason what-so-ever besides maybe some ingrained "russophobia". The very existence of Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact secret protocols was denied by soviets for longest time BTW.

These details, your comment history, repeatedly calling Kyiv "Kiev" and doubling down on describing Russian invasion in Ukraine as completely self-defensive measure against menacing NATO expansion makes me doubt you are arguing in good faith here, but calling someone a paid shill will indeed be against HN rules...

They're not even remotely capable of doing that before US intervenes. Taiwan is a heavily fortified island with unfriendly geography and a massive high tech army.

...to fight the spread of Communism.

I think China is out of there mind here. They either are A. willing to smash Taiwan to rubble and call it a victory or B. completely overestimate their chance of success.

I think China's real hope is that they can threaten their way to an advantageous position and take Taiwan without firing a bullet, but so far no one is blinking and the west is fed up with autocrats threatening warfare to get their way.

That only works if the rest of the world hasn't already decided to intervene.

And sure - NATO isn't "the rest of the world"; but militarily, it might as well be.

Of course 0-covid is only possible if it is maintained forever, because like it or not the rest of the world still has covid.

As important as TW is to rejuvenation narrative, it's ultimately the consolation prize versus dismantling US east asian security architecture and securing regional+ hegemony. That's the grand finale battle for the lightcone of future PRC security/prosperity.

>Japan is very able to defend

Japan (and SKR, and TW, and even PH) like most US allies in island chain are are heavily dependant on energy and calorie imports. They can defend themselves against invasion, but they can't defend against PRC turning them into Yemen by wrecking critical infra (cut internet cables, destroy power nodes, mine ports etc). Stuff that make them non viable as a modern economy/society. The flip side of trying to contain PRC during peace is if they try to contain PRC during war, they're stuck in the island chain with a much more autarkic PRC who can spoil region indefinitely. And because US has security commitments, it maybe in PRC interest to draw US to defend allies where PRC forces balance is strongest.

I also think while CCP obviously prefers low cost reuninfication (even if armed), I personally would not be surprised if things escalate much broader because there are larger (and worthwhile) goals / targets. If Australia is going to contribute to even supporting US efforts in TW scenario, then destroying US military infra in AU (Pinegap, Geraldton, Exmouth) will cripple US Indo Pac operation. If anything, there may come a point of favourable future PRC power balance mixed with levels of percieved US antagonism where PRC will be eager for excuses to eliminate US regional/global military infra.

P.S. I wore my tin-foil hat while posting the above. It's pretty similar to the one you're wearing.

So what gives?

Are you supporting that assertion, or are you making an unrelated point about educational models? Because the connection isn't clear to me.

To the question of vocational training vs. liberal arts education, I think you're exaggerating subtle differences in cultural attitudes toward education that really do exist. Schools in China have compulsory classes in physics, chemistry, biology, geography, and history, among other things — vocational training for a few percent of the population, but liberal arts for the rest. The most respected form of education is still calligraphy.

And, despite paying lip service to free questioning and rebellion, Western schooling consists almost entirely of intensive training in obedience and conformism: https://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

Steve Jobs wasn't the product of the Western education system; he was the product of LSD, his machinist father, a neighborhood full of engineers, working at Hewlett Packard at 13, Hare Krishna prasad, Zen Buddhism, a pilgrimage to India, Transcendental Meditation, and Primal Scream Therapy, but especially LSD. Elon Musk isn't the product of the Western education system; he's the product of his emerald-tycoon engineer father, his supermodel mother who spent her childhood seeking the Lost City of the Kalahari, and his Commodore VIC-20.

Maybe if they'd been schooled in China they would have had the independence conditioned out of them, I suppose. But I think that's more a matter of the surrounding society than the school system.

look at the top voted comment in this thread - the narrative is some sort of escalation from Xi Jinping when unification with Taiwan is boilerplate rhetoric which every leader since Deng says at Party Congress.

PRC position has not changed - commitment to unification by peaceful means, but war never off the table.

Firstly, completely dismissing Japan as a sovereign state. Complete disrespect.

Secondly, nuclear warfare is the dumbest solution possible. Who ever fires first must accept potentially losing the trust of all nations. No matter who fires for whatever reason. Barring an alien attack or something of that magnitide.

Thirdly, the US power does not come from its military - but diplomacy. Allies in strategic places captured by the flow of capital. The military maintains the status quo but isn't invincible. If it were, Russia would not exist. China would not become a superpower.

These are basics.

Lastly, because of Russia’s geographical limitations, the research de facto chooses two of its only naturally occurring warm-water ports. Novorossiysk in the Black Sea was excluded from the analysis because it is primarily an economic port housing only part of the Black Sea Fleet (BSF),

from: https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/JEMEAA/Journals/...

>>>I think you could find some hot take on Twitter (which your linked article seems to be based on besides unnamed "multiple former senior U.S. officials")

The article links to Ukrainian Pravda which cites unnamed sources close to Zelensky. So are the Ukrainian journalists credible in their reporting, or not?

>>>But they would have managed by now if they wanted to, wouldn't they?

They don't have the manpower, partly because in their arrogance they waited 6 months too late to mobilize.

>>>I guess next thing you are going to tell me is how revolution in 2014 was completely orchestrated by the West (my friends that participated are still waiting for their paychecks BTW!)

Fully orchestrated? No. Subsidized and facilitated by the US State Department and NGOs? Yes.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-ukraine-tape-idUSBREA...

>>>You assume NATO will just "walk over" Russian layered defense of endless Thors, Pancirs, Buks, S-300s and S-400s in hours to allow tank blitz on Moscow?

Not in hours. I'd assume at least 30 days for a thorough air campaign, with 1000+ sorties per day for at least the first week.

>>>Something that is factually correct but presented in certain way is one of the best and most effective kinds of propaganda.

With that mindset almost anything can be misconstrued as propaganda.

>>>I believe is is important to frame the start of WW2 in the correct way.

Except the point was never about the start of WW2. It was about identifying the terrain-related strategic vulnerabilities of central Russia which spans centuries. The purpose of highlighting the WW2 experience is simply that it is still within living memory and colors perceptions of Russian decision-makers more than, say, the Battle of Borodino.

As an aside, I also argue we should consider WW2 as starting in 1937 with the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. Eurocentrism of the major Allied Powers is the only reason we don't.

>>>what is your assessment on the likelihood of western invasion into Russia in 21st century?

Extremely extremely low. Always has been, just look at our force posture. But I absolutely assess that we aim to neutralize Russia as a Great Power, through a mix of external and internal pressures. I'd also argue that we've deliberately destabilized the nuclear MAD balance of power in pursuit of this goal, and everything that has happened in Eastern Europe in the past 15 years is fallout from that.

The same jerk has been running Russia for 20+ years, but compare what his security concerns were in 2001: https://ibs.colorado.edu/johno/pub/Putin_911.pdf

Look at our security relationships in the early-GWOT era: https://2001-2009.state.gov/p/eur/rls/rm/33912.htm

>>>What would be the motivation of invaders and their plan to prevent the war from quickly escalating into nuclear?

1) Undermine a Eurasian-spanning power bloc (reference Brzezinski's "The Great Game" for why)

2) Prevent the creation of an alternate reserve currency backed by Russian natural resources (oil + gold, Gaddafi wanted to do this before he was killed)

3) Finally eliminate the most credible nuclear existential threat to the US (China's nuclear triad, in contrast, is small and inadequate)

I don't think escalation can be prevented with sufficient reliability to approve a conventional regime change operation. The problem is, Russia's paranoid leadership likely sees things differently.

>>>Do you believe that Russian analyst has different assessment than you on the matter? If so, why?

Yes, because their lived experience and cultural environment is completely different. Their historical trauma + cultural ego/chauvinism combine to cause them to weigh the variables in the equation differently than I would. The Marine Corps suffers from similar issues, just in a different context. Our historical trauma = the Navy "abandoning" us at Guadalcanal, so we have an irrational attachment to maintaining our own air support, with stupidly-expensive/complex VTOL performance requirements. Our organizational chauvinism reinforces our refusal to source assistance from our sister services because we think we can do anything and everything by ourselves.

>>>do you believe that security concerns are indeed _the main motivation_ for the invasion? no empire-rebuilding for ideological reasons and political gains involved?

I think there must have been an assessment of security concerns and economic trends that led to "if we don't knock Ukraine out of NATO's orbit permanently NOW, it will only become impossibly difficult to do so in the future". Combined with a REALLY poor intelligence assessment of the West's reaction AND overestimating their own ability to successfully execute a regime change against the largest country in Europe, which has had 8 years of combat to improve itself.

But aren't the four (security, empire-building, ideology, politics) always inextricably linked? National leaders express "security concerns" usually because The Other Guy is interfering with their empire-building, both foreign and domestic. I loathe every time I hear a general talk about our vague "national security interests". A friend of mine used to provide communications support for Tier 1 spec ops units. He said "I didn't kick in doors with them, but I traveled with them and made sure they had working radios. What I learned was..... everything is about money, family, and power."

In general, I think this 'rebel' instinct can go either way. It can lead you to challenge the status quo and make an improvement, it can also lead you to think you're a rebel because you deny the moon landing, or you're a flat earther, or an anti-vaxer. Anti-establishmentarianism can turn from a legitimate gripe into a conspiracy rathole really quickly.

From "I don't wanna wear a mask or get vaxed" to "vaccines are implanting you with Bill Gates microchips!"

It's kinda weird how Americans would look down on a very qualified political candidate with lots of degrees, but then boost up a blithering idiot because "he's one of us". No where else is that attitude prevalent. When you are flying commercial airlines, do you want the unqualified, uneducated guy flying the plane? When you're getting heart surgery, do you want the guy who never went to med school doing your surgery? But somehow, when it comes to politics, the guy who studied economics, history, political science, engineering, somehow loses points.

Instead he says reunification would destroy TSMC because of how dependent it is on overseas suppliers.

Dude, I'm not the hyper-patriotic type of Ukrainian :)

> I can understand it's hard to hear that the people slaughtering your countrymen aren't 100% at fault...more like 95% at fault, with the other 5% being sustained multi-decade provocation from....the country that is giving you every weapon imaginable to repulse the murderers.

You seam to have _very_ poor imagination then (ATACMS long overdue? DPICM? Abrams? Finally start teaching Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16s? Some Patriots maybe?). Also, now you seem to be putting words into my mouth since I've never said that it is "100%" their fault.

> I would argue it wasn't a conversation of "wouldn't it be nice if" but them making decisions about who would be the leadership of Ukraine, which isn't something that should be decided by US State Department officials.

Can you provide exact quotes where they are making such decisions?

> These days we call it "information operations" and "psychological operations".

Your point being?

> Don't be naive. The bottom-rank locals in any revolution don't get a paper trail directly back to the US government. Most people who are getting suitcases of US dollars have enough sense to keep their mouths closed about where it came from. $50,000 from an American who "works for an NGO" so the Maidan protesters can buy supplies -> $1,000 spent on supplies "with their own money" and $49,000 quietly pocketed.

I'm not being naive and I stand by my words. I remember back in 2004 there were indeed significant amount of people on Maidan Nezalezhnostii who were being paid daily to stand there with orange stripes. In 2014 main driving force of the revolution were middle-class people donating stuff or risking their lives directly by participating. All other forces were at best secondary and at worst inconsequential. Opposition politicians where routinely booed by the revolutionaries due to their meek positions and indecisiveness.

It seems you are intelligent person, but think you are smarter/more knowledgeable about certain specific domains than you actually are, and come to egregiously bad conclusions due to underestimating the gaps in your knowledge base ;)

> In order to retaliate with nukes, their nuclear deterrent and MAD has to be credible. Which brings us back to why they were so pissed off in 2007 about ABMs in Eastern Europe: putting an ABM umbrella on their doorstep means you can shoot down their nukes (boost-phase intercept profile), which means the conventional invasion of Russia can proceed with impunity.

That is strategic nukes. What about tactical nukes delivered by cruise missiles? Won't Russia just tactical nuke the shit out of theoretical NATO army that is in the process of assuming attack formation near their border?

> I don't think most intel analysts are stupid, just human. On the contrary, the most consistent problem I see with them is the same Dunning-Kruger Effect seen on HN: they are intelligent, but think they are smarter/more knowledgeable about certain specific domains than they actually are, and come to egregiously bad conclusions due to underestimating the gaps in their knowledge base.

You provided both a detailed description and a great example of described phenomenon in the same message ;)

> The US approach to imperial domination doesn't rely on "painting the map" directly. We dominate people's central banks and financial systems instead.[7][8] It's all about maintaining the Petrodollar/global reserve currency system, which allows us to essentially tax the entire planet and give every country monopoly money in return. Monopoly money which we also spend on our gigantic military, which enforces the acceptance of said monopoly money.

I know cool-realpolitik-kids like to explain everything in the world with "petrodollar", but I don't see how it is really relevant for invasion in Afghanistan, for example. Also, petrodollar system in not straight up win as such people seem to assume when describing it in edgy and simplified way e.g. "we just give everybody fake-monopoly money and force them to accept it with our military!!1". You can read a simple and balanced analysis that also discusses flaws of petrodollar system in [0].

> I'd say these are business as usual for brutal sociopathic Soviet-trained leadership, and also the only way that Russia has any hope of controlling the vast territory it's trying to bite off from Ukraine: get rid of all of the locals. Then there is no one to support an insurgency, no one to vote the "wrong" way during referendums, etc...

But why do they need all the referendums/annexations business if they invaded just to not let spooky-scary NATO in? BTW Russians themselves don't claim that they invaded only (or even mainly) because of NATO, so I don't know why you chose it as (another) hill to die on.

> That would be the case if NATO adhered to the letter of its own laws/documents/policies. But I think the Russians don't consider that possibility as something they want to bet their future on. It would mean putting the future safety of the Russian State entirely in the benevolent hands of NATO decision-makers. I think after the 2007 ABM dispute, any perception of NATO benevolence in Putin's mind was shattered. Maybe we'll carve out a special exception for Ukraine. Maybe we'll re-write NATO's Articles to remove the "no existing territorial disputes" clause. Or maybe the US would just bully/bribe every other member into voting "Yes" to Ukraine. These sound unbelievable to most Westerners, but they are probably all realistic risks in the brain of a KGB field agent. So after Ukraine's constitutional amendment in 2019 [9], Putin probably decided to seize the initiative. If he spent a few months figuring out exactly how to respond, that would put him Summer-Fall of 2019....planning to execute an early 2020 full annexation. Then COVID hit, and Putin waited until the global pandemic was stabilized before setting in motion staging his troops for invasion (Fall 2021 with a planned January invasion)...then he had to delay AGAIN after Big Daddy Xi told him "Don't fuck up my Olympics with your war." So world events may have delayed a Spring 2020 invasion until Spring 2022, which means we're actually witnessing the fastest possible turn-around time for a Russian offensive, assuming Ukraine's amendment was the straw that broke the camel's back. It also means Putin may have planned an invasion while notoriously-anti-interventionist Trump was in office, but ended up getting puppet-on-warmonger-strings Biden in the White House by the time everything was ready. shrug Entirely supposition on my part.

So what stopped spooky-scary NATO from accepting Ukraine after it first applied in 2008? And how much more time did sneaky US need to finally "bribe" all the other members to accept Ukraine as-is after the previous war? It is another favorite Russian propaganda talking point ("NATO was plotting to accept Ukraine!!1") when in reality it seemed to be completely not interested.

[0]: https://www.lynalden.com/fraying-petrodollar-system/