Comment by ImJamal 2 days ago
I am not sure if Taiwan has any real leverage. If Taiwan is destroyed or otherwise compromised by China, the US would probably seize the American branch of TSMC, force the sale of the American branch to a western company, or force TSMC America become an independent company.
Context matters.
Reactions to active conflict have a different threshold than normal civil operations. The interests of the US are biased towards continued peace. War is inherently value destructive (even if the military industrial complex gets to sell more stuff for a bit) so a majority of the population from a multitude of perspectives would rather remain fat and happy with their circuses (sports-ball).
That balance changes, as it has since the dawn of western history times, when outside forces disrupt the regular machinations of the people. When events like Pearl Harbor, the turn of the century terrorist airplane hijackings that turned them into missiles and America's citizens into hostages to our own national security theater paranoia, or some country turning the place all of our iPhone and computer brains are fabricated in into a war zone.
It’s looking really bad for Taiwan to be honest and I don’t think the US has the political will to face off a full on invasion of China against Taiwan. Our military could handle it, but I don’t think the public will is there. I don’t think that China will come away with much other than more land though, the Taiwanese will not hand over their factories and IP to CCP companies, they will blow them up.
Any conflict would leave the small island looking like Gaza, a pyrrhic victory for everyone involved -- if you're trying to seize more than land. It's conceivable that the country making islands in the SCS would see a mere land grab as a win, doubly so if they can weather the global hit to chip production better than their rivals. It's untenable for the US to have so many critical eggs in such a vulnerable basket.
This seems extremely naïve about what it takes to run tsmc and how human capital works.
The notion that the US could quickly build up the same capability Taiwan has currently is absurd - as we are currently seeing.
Taiwan has significant leverage in this respect
Isn't that like China seizing an iPhone factory and declaring that they are going to make the next iPhone? I doubt that a TSMC US fab can function independently for very long in the case of invasion, the Taiwanese govt presumably did this calculation before signing off on it.