Good. It was a naked attempt at a shakedown, and also 100% a bluff.
It takes more than a few years to spin up a chip fab, with an outlay on the order of hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars. Even if they’d been eager to take the US up on the deal (and why would they want to relinquish a functional monopoly on cutting end processors?), there’s no way they’d be dealing with the same administration by the time it was completed. Even if Trump was still in office, the fucker changes his mind every five minutes. Not conducive to long-term economic projects like this.
Now is emphatically not the time to undermine their strategic defense policy, which largely revolves around “if the CCP invades, we will melt our chip fabs to slag”.
TSMC won’t have their edge forever. China’s fabs are catching up quickly, with 5nm chips in production and 3nm chips possible in a few more years. This was a good strategy when China needed to import these chips and Taiwan had the market cornered. But if TSMC’s rigged-to-explode labs go up in smoke after China’s a major player in the market, that actually benefits Beijing.
Strapping yourself with Semtex might be a savvy play in a single moment, but it’s not going to work long term.
That’s before you consider the real threat Taiwan poses to China is as a launchpad for US strikes into the interior.
takeda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
The idea behind that fab was so US can continue to build weapons if Taiwan was under attack, this why it wasn’t the latest technology. The weapons would still be important to defend it, but yeah this admin is signalling Taiwan won’t get help and is asking for 50% so it won’t suffer consequences of not helping them.
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Kinda the MO of this regime, if we’re being honest
Dozzi92@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
Yeah, I think the whole idea of the US wanting the chips produced inside its own borders makes sense in a vacuum. China fucks around (which, sure, is against their character), chips are safe.
Obviously we don’t live in a vacuum, and the US diplomatic mission is, at best, totally unreadable, and at worst, won’t help anyone but itself.
As with just about any other nation, the US is using what is ostensibly it’s only bargaining chip these days, their massive consumerism, knowing that Taiwan sells the majority of its chips to the US.
This play seems to be Trump’s only play: Demand something outrageous, with some thinly veiled threats overlaying the demand. Get rejected. Receive counterproposal that is far, far less than initial demand. Tout superiority.
takeda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 hours ago
They were already building a plant in US via Chips Act.