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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022

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The Redline Podcast had a good episode on the whole situation including Microchips. Several notes:

  • You really cannot move the high-tech semiconductor lithography machines. They are the size of a bus with incredibly complicated innards that have to be setup outside of highways or other disturbance to be able to create the microchips. A hot war would probably destroy the capacity for years even under best of circumstances.

  • The whole game with microchips now is that the tech is moving very fast. Basically the cost of producing high-end chips doubles every four years. It is a race against time, even if China conquered Taiwan they would only get temporary reprieve. Moreover even Taiwan is not self-sufficient as high-tech chipmaking has truly global supply chain and it is connected to suppliers from US, Netherlands, Japan and other countries that provide tens of thousands of components for their chipmaking machines.

  • Making chips is very dependent on high-skilled work. If key people flee Taiwan then China will be left with just some hardware that they are unable to utilize

Specifically for invasion, this is highly unrealistic. Russia attacked Ukraine from multiple angles, they had huge army just ready to roll in by tanks. Taiwan is an island with famously rugged coastline. Moreover Taiwan already has high-tech army including anti-ship missiles as well as strategic partners in the region. This invasion would be nightmare from Chinese side.

Second, China is highly vulnerable to sanctions and not because of exports. They rely on imports for basic things like energy and food and their sea routes are unsecure as there are several bottlenecks controlled by hostile nations - that is the whole point of Chinese belligerent stance toward their immediate neighborhood of South China Sea or Malacca Strait in Indonesia.