I doubt the parent has access to American war plans, but it's reasonable to guess that the US would prefer for China not to have intact TSMC plants because it provides enormous leverage. It's the same as blowing up Nordstream II. This is standard war stuff, and if the US is at war with China, heavy sanctions, etc, we wouldn't be able to buy the chips anyway. Why not drop a cruise missile on it?
Personally I hope such a thing doesn't happen. If I had to guess, Taiwan will eventually come under mainland China's control, but I hope this is done very slowly and in a bloodless way following a referendum by the Taiwanese themselves (e.g., only after certain guarantees of autonomy are made and the Taiwanese opt for the 'easy route'). I doubt mainland China will accept this thorn in their side indefinitely.
If the mainland decided on a military take-over of Taiwan they would not care about this. Their aims would be longer term and motivations deeper and this would not act as deterrent. If anything the push by the mainland to develop its own semi industry is aimed at avoiding 'suffering' from sanctions and loss of Taiwan's production capability.
So, IMHO, this suggestion from the US military serves US interests (the US Army War College is obviously looking after US interests not foreign countries'), probably because destroying TSMC facilities in Taiwan would prevent the mainland from acquiring state-of-the-art tech, or at least slow it, and would prevent mainland China from 'owning' the global semi production capacity. On the other, as things stand, this would wreak havoc on international semi markets and global economy.
Lastly, any looming invasion would be known many months in advance because of the massive scale of the military build-up (probably bigger than D-Day) and be preceded by large scale air attacks.
My guess would be there is a plan for the US to bomb the TSMC factories in the event of China winning an extremely costly war against Taiwan. I’m not sure the US would actually come to Taiwan’s aid. I mean surely Taiwan has enough arms to destroy a very expensive chunk of Beijing and Shanghai in response to any invasion? Terrifying stuff...
The mainland knows it needs to develop its own semi industry. It's already having issues because of US sanctions, and would likely face even more sanctions if it decided to invade Taiwan, not too mention the risk of destruction of Taiwan's facility, indeed.
On the other hand, as things stand destroying TSMC would hurt everyone, as you say. China is working on reducing that hurt because it is obviously sensible to do so, the US are also working on reducing that hurt for the same reason. But the historical and political forces are such that I don't think China would be deterred because Taiwan planned to blow up TSMC facilities...
So, IMHO this is just the US trying to make sure that China would not get TSMC fabs as that would be the worst outcome for them, not a deterrent.
I’m pretty sure the Taiwanese factories are rigged to go, or at least those factories will be destroyed in the event of an invasion. Plus it’ll be easy to sanction China and prevent them from acquiring new fab tech to rebuild the factories.
I’m pretty sure the US is ok with the world being set backwards a bit in tech if they get to reacquire chip leadership. A more cynical person could suggest that the US is agitating for a war in order to precipitate this very outcome.
The US could just extract a few key TSMC engineers, turn its facilities into a crater, and back out. I don't think anyone wants to start WWIII with China over an exiled Chinese government living on an island that's less than 200 miles from the Chinese mainland other than an occupied Taiwanese people.
I'm not even certain that the US could land a force in the area, given China's investment in defensive missile installations.
The machines may be rigged to explode, flood, or otherwise hose themselves, but active sabotage is largely unnecessary. If China takes Taiwan by force, two things will happen: 1) the US will heavily sanction anyone who trades with them, so even if they manage to keep the TSMC fab online it won't do them any good in a commercial sense; and 2) without ongoing service and support from ASML and many other Western vendors, the equipment will work for about as long as the leased aircraft that Russia stole from Airbus's and Boeing's customers.
They might get six or twelve months of production out of TSMC's facility, and then things will start to break that they will not be able to fix easily. Invading Taiwan will cause economic damage measured in hundreds of billions of dollars at a bare minimum, and much of that damage will be suffered by China.
Bottom line, it would be insanely stupid of China to attack Taiwan. Of course, many people (including myself) said the same thing about Putin and Ukraine, so...
So what? Taiwan being annexed by China sounds quite terrible for the Taiwanese, but the US does lots of business with China, continued to during the Hong Kong crisis and would continue to if there was a Taiwan crisis, so it's not like these chip fabs, TSMC or the business relationship would be that much at risk. The show would go on, which is probably why the US doesn't fear investment into TSMC.
There have been unsubstantiated rumors for years that the Taiwanese military has outfitted TSMC fabs with explosives that can be rigged to go off in the event of a mainland invasion in order to deny China access to TSMC capabilities.
The rumor doesn't actually need to be true in order to act as a deterrent -- it just needs to be leaked to Chinese officials and considered credible. It also assumes that access to TSMC is a strong motivation for an invasion, which may or may not be true.
In any case, the answer to your question depends on whether this is true, and whether the explosives are actually used. If the fabs are destroyed, it'll set the world back by at least a decade.
So if you thought the chip shortage was bad today...
On the other hand, if it's not true (or if it is, but the fabs aren't destroyed for whatever reason), and operations continue despite an invasion, I can definitely imagine a scenario where the rest of the world just sort of shrugs and goes with it. Kind of a horrifying thought, but what are the alternatives? Attack China? They have nukes. Everyone will condemn China, sure. Then China will get upset and claim that we're all "hurting the feelings of the Chinese people" [1], and that'll be the end of it.
First, your phrasing could read as concern trolling style gloating, which you probably didn't intend.
China may invade Taiwan within my lifetime, but it won't be triggered by anything to do with TSMC.
China and the US are both involved in the Taiwan conflict due to history, ideology, and current economic relationships. Nothing material about that changes with TSMC building facilities in the US. If anything US ties grow stronger.
TSMC is not something China can acquire with military power. It's not a building in a RTS game you can just take over and operate yourself. It's a huge number of engineers and a globe spanning high tech supply chain. All that grinds to a halt the moment missiles fly into Taiwan.
It's plainly obvious that US does not want the PRC to have access to TSMC, or anything like it. And this suggestion from US military academics is most likely based on the fact that the US is not going to send its troops in for Taiwan.
So far, nothing new.
PRC wants Taiwan back for reasons beyond just TSMC. It's probably the only one of the containment that the Chinese has a chance of breaching without going into full scale war.
If the situation gets bad enough for Taiwan to blow up it's own crown jewel in anticipation for war, at that point, what's stopping the Chinese from bombing the shit out of the rest of the Taiwanese government and military installation and follow through? Probably nothing.
Doing that is dumb for the lives of Taiwanese. It would only benefit the US and no one else.
If the weapons are not placed in Taiwan, there's no guarantee that the US would use them to defend Taiwan.
If the US formally makes such a guarantee, that in itself might trigger a nuclear war.
This is a game of chicken, and games of chicken are rather dangerous. Do you want your city nuked to save Taiwan? Does Xi want to risk having Shanghai and Beijing obliterated to maybe take Taiwan?
If there is an actual war over Taiwan, it's hopefully going to be a conventional one. But that would also mean China may risk it. Which would make TSMC production out of service for months or years (or forever).
If China invades, the West probably couldn't swallow Russian-style sanctions for the whole country, but it would assuredly enact sanctions related to activity in Taiwan. TSMC is not trading with China suppliers to make its chips, its trading West.
So TSMC would probably become irrelevant in due time if there were strong sanctions against China. That, and the persistent rumour that Taiwan has a plan to literally blow up the fabs if China invades gives us a picture were invading Taiwan is ideological for China, not an economic power grab.
If there are US fabs, and China invades Taiwan then Taiwanese fabs are destroyed, and China loses access to advanced chips, but the US and the west do not. This puts China at a major disadvantage compared to the US, for at least a few decades in the future, if it decides to invade Taiwan.
It seems unlikely that US and west would get involved in a direct major military conflict with China, no matter what. The costs are too great. It is far more likely that they would only provide military equipment and intelligence (like Ukraine).
So this move of TSMC actually strengthens the shield a lot more than it weakens the spear.
I imagine the logic is that if the US has its own domestic chip production and isn’t so dependent on Taiwanese chips, then the US may not care as much if China invades Taiwan.
Personally I hope such a thing doesn't happen. If I had to guess, Taiwan will eventually come under mainland China's control, but I hope this is done very slowly and in a bloodless way following a referendum by the Taiwanese themselves (e.g., only after certain guarantees of autonomy are made and the Taiwanese opt for the 'easy route'). I doubt mainland China will accept this thorn in their side indefinitely.
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