The US military is preparing for war on China, and has missile systems in the Philippines aimed at major Chinese cities. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says the USA is making “Japan into a war-fighting headquarters”. Ben Norton discusses the extremely aggressive policies of Trump, Biden, and beyond.
Trump’s nuclear trade war targets China - but will blow back on USA: Trump’s nuclear trade war targets China - but will blow back on USA
US Defense Secretary Hegseth wants to overthrow China’s government, in ‘crusade’ against left (and Islam): US Defense Secretary Hegseth wants to overthrow China’s government, in ‘crusade’ against left (and Islam)
China will fuck with Taiwan just enough to get them to melt their chip foundries, then blockade the fuck out of them till they say uncle. Give china another five years or so to get their own chip industry to something approaching parity, then they’ll strike. Once Taiwan loses their best export, support for them will plummet.
To be honest, I’m amazed it took til Biden before we saw more pressure on TSMC as a flashpoint.
Even if we’re on nominal good terms because they’re a capitalist democracy, nobody likes single points of failure (earthquakes and industrial disasters happen even without geopolitical tensions)
But we’ve handled it miserably-- throw some money at Intel who can’t innovate out of their gilded cage anymore, and try to get a few TSMC facilities stateside-- when we should have been trying to completely diversify the supply chains with new players and new geographies.
In fact, it’s amazing that we lost the concept of second sourcing. That ensured no one vendor held you hostage. Like 8 different firms made 8088s, on up to the 486, but after that it dried up fast. You saw a few IBM badged Cyrix 6x86s, but who else sells a pin-compatible Ryzen?
I hope once China gets far enough up on the tech curve, they see distributing fab tech as a BRI programme. No reason your next bag of 74LS04s, or the 30-cent MCU in your thermostat, can’t be made on a 28nm fab in Burkina Faso.