Comment by YetAnotherNick a year ago
Many commenters on HN have this weird idea that if Taiwan is slightly ahead of competition, US would defend Taiwan against a country with nukes. Or that TSMC superiority is Taiwan's national security issue.
The US would probably defend Taiwan if the CCP invaded it. I don't think we would ever use nukes.
No they wouldn't, TW doesn't have the ordnance or ability to deliver said ordnance to structurally damage a gravity dam, especially one size of three gorges. They're much better off hitting PRC coastal nuclear (something that worries PRC planners), either way, it's suicide by war crime.
Yes. If Ukraine executes Russian POWs, or firebombs Moscow, it's still a war crime even if Russia invaded with the goal of genociding them (yes, saying an ethnicity doesn't really exist and they're just confused Russians, kidnapping children to resettle elsewhere, and forcefully assimilating at gunpoint everyone in the occupied territories is genocide).
War crimes are absolute, there's no "if you weren't first, you get one free".
You cannot destroy the Largest Dam ever built with conventional Ballistic Missiles but you can level the dam with a nuclear weapon, in which case why use the nuke on a dam why not use it directly on population centers.
Honestly, if China wants to just go take that Eastern half of Russia they are welcome. Nobody would stop them and much of the world would cheer.
I've wondered if China encouraged Russia to invade Ukraine to weaken them so they can become a Chinese vassal state to supply raw materials.
Doesn’t TSMC building a plant in US, offset the need for US to invade Taiwan. Perhaps Taiwan expects US support out of goodwill, but I think Taiwan overestimates how much goodwill drives US politics. Taiwan might have had a better chance of getting support, if it maintained a monopoly on circuit production.
You think if say US bombs all the CCP's planes, CCP would sit silently and accept defeat? Same thing happened with Ukraine. NATO couldn't escalate the war at any cost, so they can just play safe and only do things that don't risk escalation.
The NATO strategy in Ukraine hasn’t been great for Ukraine, but the old cold warriors of the 1980s would be pissing their pants to find how well it worked against the Russians.
Wiping out significant portions of their army, navy, and air force for a fraction of a single year’s budget and not a single American death?
From a geopolitical standpoint, for the US specifically, yes. It's probably the most cost-effective (in money and lives) military spending the US has done since WWII.
From a human standpoint, I wish they'd given the Ukranians ATACMS and HIMARS and F-16s on week two, when it was abundantly clear they had the will to fight. The dribbling out of slowly expanding limits has been painful to watch.
Nuclear weapons don't win wars though. Once you launch, you're dead. The retaliation will guarantee your own destruction.
The Cold War led to the arms build up it did because of exactly this paradox: on close inspection, it seemed unlikely the US would lose the Eastern seaboard cities just to protect Berlin, for example.
Because Samsung and Intel would probably close the gap by the time the war is done. They are just 2-4 years behind with the gaps already closing in.
> Many commenters on HN have this weird idea that if Taiwan is slightly ahead of competition, US would defend Taiwan against a country with nukes. Or that TSMC superiority is Taiwan's national security issue.
Well... TSMC is definitely a component of Taiwan's national security. It's called the "Silicon Shield" for a reason.
And the US definitely has more reasons to go to war, and more importantly, threaten war to prevent one breaking out, over Taiwan if it knows there will be a massive economic impact.
And China definitely knows that if Taiwan is important for the US, it's almost certain the US would defend it.