[MVissers]

Decoupling from China will lead to China annex Taiwan sooner. China will have the USA and the world by the balls then, so not sure we want that to happen quicker.

And I don't think anyone is calling themselves allies of the USA right now. The whole world is looking to decouple from the USA. Europe is completely over the USA, they can't rely on them for leadership, protection or for trade.

From a tech perspective, expect Europe to decouple from the USA from an economic and cultural perspective in the next decade. Smartest thing Europe can do is to create alternatives to US services, build its own defense industry and stop looking at the USA for any leadership.

[permo-w]

is TSMC not currently building a plant in the US? and ASML are Dutch, so they're not at risk. I’m not saying that China taking Taiwan wouldn't be a massive strategic boon, but I don't think it would be "having the world by the balls" by any means

[anigbrowl]

I suggest reading this before getting too excited about shiny new manufacturing plants that will require years to stand up.

https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/business/2023/03/23/wha...

[DougMerritt]

TSMC has not committed to a US plant that applies their most advanced technology. Currently, they are going to produce chips with larger slower features, some generations behind their state of the art -- that's commercially very useful, and a good idea, but in no way replaces the state of the art chips that they produce in Taiwan. Alas.

[nsteel]

I think the last 6 years have shown how shakey electronics supply chains are. One factory in the US isn't going to come close to avoiding chaos.

[robocat]

A knowledge economy depends on information. TSMC will keep key knowledge within Taiwan as part of their Silicon Shield[1].

Look closely at a business you know well and notice how much the profits depend upon information in people's heads.

Everything runs on a combination of money (capitalist profits) and non-money gains (other gains that people really care about).

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tsmc+silicon+shield

[absolutelastone]

I think it's three at this point? With the first one coming online this year.

[pfannkuchen]

America only cared about Taiwan because it warehoused the exiled American friendly government that had a historical claim to power and could potentially be reinstalled.

As time goes on that becomes less and less relevant. Might be time to cut and run.

[roenxi]

> Decoupling from China will lead to China annex Taiwan sooner. China will have the USA and the world by the balls then, so not sure we want that to happen quicker.

That seems to be over-rating the importance of Taiwan. If Taiwan sank into the sea tomorrow that'd be a catastrophe and the world would be worse off. But not that badly worse off. Life would continue. China's main global lever comes from the power of their unparalleled-in-history industrial strength and the aura of leadership they are building up internationally because they are substantially more peaceful than the US.

The peacefulness is probably not going to last, unfortunately, but until they change tack it is what it is.

[0dayz]

Ah so now we shouldn't give a shit about country let alone a democratic country being invaded.

Why not turn America then into a nuclear testing site? Since democracies aren't important.