TSMC expected to announce $100B investment in U.S. • Hacker News Board

Re: TSMC expected to announce $100B investment in U.S.

#571

Post by lurk2 » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 2:19 PM UTC

jopsen wrote: post #227

lurk2 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would subsequent presidents allow Taiwan to maintain leverage over supply chains crucial to American national security?

Subsequent president might realize that America might want allies, and if so they'll attempt to appear reliable. Current administration is fast tracking nuclear prolifiacian. A future president might want to stop such trends.

> Subsequent president might realize that America might want allies

And to gain those allies they will give them control over these key supply lines so that said allies can dictate America's foreign policy?

Re: TSMC expected to announce $100B investment in U.S.

#572

Post by diamondfist25 » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 2:22 PM UTC

echoangle wrote: post #353

rjzzleep wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia has a fraction of the industrial capacity of China. Russia and Ukraine share several borders with multiple NATO countries, and Ukraine had integrated rail networks. Nevertheless Russia took 4 times the size of Taiwan and is taking more day by day. Anyone that understands basic logistics and can read a map knows that this is not winnable. Not only that, but the undersecretary of state is the guy that advocated…

Are you talking about a different Taiwan? In what world is the economy of Taiwan stagnating for decades? Look at the growth in GDP and GDP per capita here and tell me that’s stagnation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Taiwan

Taiwanese here

Taiwan Econ has stagnated for decades.

Hence the top low birth rate in the world

Avg salary of tw is 1.5k usd. The same as 20-30 yrs ago

Re: TSMC expected to announce $100B investment in U.S.

#573

Post by greenavocado » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 2:22 PM UTC

Clubber wrote: post #57

bilbo0s wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not trying to be flip or anything, but why can't it just be to defend the US? From anyone who may come. Serious question.

>why can't it just be to defend the US? It was that way for most of our existence (and empire building). The whole world police thing came after WWII.

> The whole world police thing came after WWII

Laughs in Barbary Wars and Monroe Doctrine

Re: TSMC expected to announce $100B investment in U.S.

#574

Post by saghm » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 2:27 PM UTC

silvestrov wrote: post #542

throw0101a wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From China’s perspective, the cost of war is much higher than the cost of developing these chips themselves. You are being economically rational. Not all human decisions are done through that lens. "Thucydides found that people go to war out of 'honor, fear, and interest.'” — Donald Kagan, On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Kagan * https://acoup.blog/2019/12/0…

The problem with your argument is that in current times it is much more likely that China acts rationally than the US does. A better argument would be that when China has "good enough" chips then they don't care about chip production in Taiwan. They will only care about sea access. So if Taiwan ends up as completely destroyed rock, then that is ok for China. They will see it as a much better result than other parts o…

> The problem with your argument is that in current times it is much more likely that China acts rationally than the US does.

I don't think these options are exclusive; more than one party can act irrationally at the same time.

Re: TSMC expected to announce $100B investment in U.S.

#575

Post by re-thc » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 2:27 PM UTC

abirch wrote: post #569

re-thc wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Taiwan is ridiculously favourable terrain for the defenders; if they fight back, there can't be quick victory Not true. Just sneakily cut the submarine cables i.e. Internet before the "offical attack". Most of the comments talk about a blockade, but no need. I doubt a lot of things will function without Internet. There were discussions of Satellite but not confirmed.

I'm unsure of how many internet services Taiwan relies on outside of Taiwan? If the servers are on the island, my understanding is that they'll be fine. Unfortunately they won't be able to access Hacker News, but they should be able to bank, buy groceries, etc.

> If the servers are on the island, my understanding is that they'll be fine.

Taiwan doesn't have a huge data center capacity. A lot of services are in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore, etc...

Of the big clouds e.g. AWS is only opening a data center later this year.

It's also not so simple. Even local servers / services might have all sorts of "needs" to phone "home" elsewhere e.g. for analytics. A lot of software might not have been tested and will crash. Even the big clouds might not work in isolation.

Then there's also things like patches, updates, firmwares etc. A lot of things like kubernetes clusters may be set to auto update and crash. If you need a docker image the local CDN didn't cache then it is gone.

Re: TSMC expected to announce $100B investment in U.S.

#576

Post by belter » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 2:31 PM UTC

tnt128 wrote: post #314

The idea that the US protects Taiwan from a possible Chinese invasion over chips is one of those things that sounds believable but really isn't going to happen. From China’s perspective, the cost of war is much higher than the cost of developing these chips themselves. In the worst-case scenario, they would be 2-3 years behind the cutting edge, which is not mission-critical. Most electronics (civilian or military) do…

Or just get a compromised President, and you spend just a few billion in joint ventures: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/28/business/ivanka-trump-chi...

Re: TSMC expected to announce $100B investment in U.S.

#577

Post by diamondfist25 » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 2:32 PM UTC

827a wrote: post #252

protocolture wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allies are good for America. Trade is good for America. Isolation has never been good for anyone. >The USA is going to claw back whatever economic largesse it has granted to the rest of the world The USA is going to stop bribing people to like them, an arrangement that suited the USA very well, but is difficult to articulate to seppos in general. >This is a net relative win for the US economically because once it cla…

Its easy to think in extremes, but the reality will be far more moderate than your characterization. Remember: US policies have a way of flip-flopping every two years as new Presidents and Senators take office, and its very likely that unless Trump can score some massive wins in 2025, Democrats will retake Congressional majority in 2026; the base is incited, if these comments are anything to look at. But, the directi…

Ur delusional to think dems are taking anything

Re: TSMC expected to announce $100B investment in U.S.

#578

Post by greedo » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 2:34 PM UTC

iwontberude wrote: post #567

tyre wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They will only care about sea access. This is not why the CCP cares about Taiwan. And they’ve cared quite a lot since before there were semiconductors.

To follow up, Taiwan literally blocks their ability to see and defend against attacks coming from behind the Taiwanese island. It’s about observability and reducing easy beachheads.

It's about exerting political control.

Re: TSMC expected to announce $100B investment in U.S.

#579

Post by LPisGood » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 2:35 PM UTC

WillPostForFood wrote: post #387

LPisGood wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue with most citizens getting left behind has far less to do with globalization and far more with wealth concentration. The overall wealth in the country greatly increased, but pitiful distribution led to that situation.

Strongly disagree. If you had a middle class manufacturing job in the US, globalization meant you were competing globally against third world labor. Your job, your industry, left the country. This process contributes to wealth concentration, but wealth concentration isn't creating the problem, globalization is.

Globalization created the problem that manufacturing jobs were lost, but the overall wealth of the population still went up.

That means the problem is where the money is.

Re: TSMC expected to announce $100B investment in U.S.

#580

Post by stevetron » Tue, Mar 04, 2025, 2:41 PM UTC

It is my understanding that FABS require a lot of water. I don't think Arizona has enough water. I could be wrong, though. They keep a nuclear power plant running in AZ by piping in gray water for it.