It's a race that China will probably lose (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Semiconductors are for the 21st century what oil was for the 20th — the material resource that fuels the entire modern economy. And, much like oil in the Seventies, our leaders are waking up to the fact that microchip manufacturing is a rivalrous geopolitical issue; in the mounting Sino-American cold war, both power blocs are competing for the military and economic advantages they confer.
Chris Miller, author of Chip War, spoke to Freddie Sayers about how semiconductors became such a vexed issue, the purpose of America’s protectionist CHIPS Act, and the chances of military confrontation over Taiwan, the world capital of microchip manufacturing, which he places at 20%. Below is an edited transcript.
Freddie Sayers: Why have microchips become a geopolitical issue?
Chris Miller: If you look at the production of advanced processor chips — the types of chips that process data that you find in a smartphone and PC, or a data centre — around 90% of them are made in Taiwan, which also produces over a third of the new computing power in the world each year. Taiwan’s importance is really extraordinary when it comes to all of the world’s technology. And it’s managed to acquire this position largely thanks to the efforts of a single company called Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), founded in 1987. Since that time it has grown inexorably: today, it’s both the world’s most advanced chip-maker and also the world’s largest manufacturer of silicon chips.
FS: And this pre-eminence can be traced back to TSMC’s founder, Morris Chang. Is he still involved?
CM: He’s officially retired, although he still plays a big role in the company’s decision making and in the company’s culture. He played a critical role in building the entire chip industry. He was in Texas when the first chip was invented in 1958. He played a major role in Silicon Valley’s decision to globalise the industry and build assembly facilities in East Asia, places like Hong Kong and Singapore, and especially Taiwan. More than anyone else, he can claim to have made possible the semiconductors on which the modern economy is critically dependent.
FS: Do we know anything about his politics — his contemporary relationships with China and the US?
CM: He’s done such a good job in business, in part by managing relations with multiple different governments. He was born in mainland China; his father was an official in the nationalist government. When the Communists took power in 1949, he and his family fled. He moved to the US and enrolled at at Harvard, then he spent 30 years working in the US chip industry — he held the US security clearance for working on specialised chips that went into defence systems. And then he got a job offer to start this company in Taiwan, backed by the Taiwanese government, which put up three quarters of the money needed to found TSMC. And since then, he’s lived in Taiwan. He’s still a US citizen. But he’s one of the most influential people in Taiwan because he founded and for a long time ran a business that contributes around 10% of Taiwan’s GDP. But he has generally stayed out of politics. Most of TSMC’s facilities are in Taiwan, a couple of small facilities in China, and a couple of small facilities in the United States. But it’s predominantly focused on production in Taiwan.
FS: How did this history lead to the conflict we see today?
CM: The problem is that TSMC has grown its capacity in Taiwan over the last two decades, just as America’s military advantages around Taiwan have been deteriorating, and China’s have been growing. And so it’s in some ways really the fault of the United States for failing to keep deterrence in the Taiwan Straits effective. Two decades ago, it was obvious, in the event of world war, who would win. Today, it is not at all obvious who would win. That uncertainty created by our decision to let our military advantages over China deteriorate — that’s why we’re concerned about production in Taiwan.
FS: Do you think chips specifically are making the possibility of conflict between China and the West more likely?
CM: I think when Chinese leaders assess the situation in Taiwan and think about their goals vis-á-vis Taiwan, they’re not primarily thinking about semiconductors. The reality is, the Chinese Communist Party has wanted to control Taiwan since before the first semiconductor was invented. When they talk about Taiwan, they talk about the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, these broad ideological slogans rather than anything specific, technological or economic in nature. If we’re trying to understand policymaking in Beijing, leaders in China realise that Taiwan produces a lot of chips, but that’s not at the centre of their thinking. Now, some people say that Taiwan’s role in chip-making deters conflict, because China knows that if it were to attack Taiwan, it would destroy the chip-making facilities and the entire world, including China, would pay a massive economic cost. And it’s true, the cost would be tremendous. But there’s lots of examples of wars in history that have been waged by leaders who have decided the economic costs were worth it, or underestimated the economic costs — look at Putin, for example. I think anyone who is betting on “mutual-assured economic destruction” to maintain the peace doesn’t have much grounding in history on which to base that faith. And if we were to lose access to Taiwan’s chips through a war or a blockade, the impact on global manufacturing would be as dramatic as anything we’ve seen since the Great Depression.
FS: Biden’s CHIPS Act is a response to this threat — what does it do and is it making the situation more or less dangerous?
CM: The CHIPS Act is trying to make it less costly to build chip-making facilities in the US. The goal is to reduce reliance on Taiwan by building new capacity in the US and providing subsidies for companies to do that. So both US firms and also foreign firms that build in the US will be able to apply for subsidies to help defray the cost of production. And it’s already clear that there’s new investment coming in to the US that wouldn’t have happened otherwise, thanks to the subsidies. The challenge is that we’ve allocated $39 billion to subsidies, when one new chip-making facility can cost $20 billion. So $39 billion sounds like a lot of money, but it’s not that much. And our reliance on Taiwan is so substantial, that we’re going to need vast new construction not only in the US, but also in Japan and Europe and Singapore and elsewhere to really diversify the manufacturing base.
FS: The CHIPS Act also really tightens sanctions on China specifically.
CM: The CHIPS Act bans any company that receives US government funding from also investing in cutting edge facilities in China, and then, relatedly, the US government last year banned the transfer of cutting-edge chip-making tools and cutting-edge AI chips to China. And although Taiwan is the country that can manufacture chips most efficiently, the tools inside the facility in Taiwan and inside of every advanced shipping facility in the world are produced by US, Japanese and Dutch firms. The US wants to stop these tools from going to China, with the aim of stopping China’s chip industry from catching up. And this is going to cause dramatic problems for Chinese firms, because, for the past several decades, they’ve made real advances, but they’ve relied on imported tools. There are no Chinese firms that can produce comparable tools domestically. China’s ship industry faces a dilemma whereby they can produce not-cutting-edge chips, using tools they import, but they can’t produce cutting-edge chips because they can’t get the machinery that’s necessary from the US, from Japan or from the Netherlands.
FS: Is this a rare case of sanctions actually working?
CM: I think they’re certainly working in terms of having an impact on the Chinese ship industry. But that’s only the intermediate goal. The long-run goal of the export controls is to stop China from developing advanced AI systems that can be deployed for military and intelligence uses. And to train an AI system, you need access to the most advanced chips in a vast data centre. The US’s goal over the next decade is to make it harder for China to acquire the chips needed to train AI systems, so that China’s intelligence and military systems are less capable, and America is able to apply AI faster than China. That’s the goal. The success or failure of that will be measured over five or ten years; it can’t really be measured today.
FS: Do you think it’s the military application of this that makes it so central?
CM: The concern isn’t only the specific chips that are in missiles or in planes — more important than that is the chips that are in the data centres where AI systems are trained. So if you want to train a car to drive autonomously, or a drone to fly autonomously, you do it in a data centre. And these data centres are immensely computationally intensive. If you want to train a computer-vision algorithm to recognise a cat versus a dog, you need to show it millions and millions of pictures of cats and dogs before it learns. And you need ultra-advanced chips to do that processing efficiently. So for training drones for defence systems, advanced data centres are key, which means advanced chips are key and that’s what militaries are really focused on right now. If you want more autonomous, smarter military systems, you need to train them in advanced data centres. That’s the key use of chips in next-generation military systems.
FS: Given their value, might a black market for chips develop?
CM: It’s certainly going to happen — we see that with Russia today. It’s now illegal to transfer many different types of chips to Russia for military purposes, but Russia’s smuggling them in from Turkey and Kazakhstan, and from China. The types of chips the US is controlling for AI purposes are different, because they’re only used in a relatively small number of use cases. And the data centres that we’re worried about are vast buildings that can be seen from space. So it’s hard to say if we’re going to stop 100 types of a given chip from getting into Russia — I’m pretty confident the Russian security service services can smuggle most of those in. But if you’re talking about bringing in tens of thousands of chips to fill up an advanced data centre, that’s a much more tractable problem for intelligence agencies to keep an eye on.
FS: So it’s a race between the US and China as to who can onshore sophisticated chip production fastest?
CM: I think that’s how China sees it. I think the US sees it slightly differently, because the US is capable of producing advanced chips, not on its own, but in cooperation with Japan, with the Netherlands, with Korean, with Taiwan. It’s only by acquiring software designs, machine tools, and materials from all of those countries that you can make an advanced chip. The US strategy is not to onshore everything; it’s not to create a self-sufficient sphere. It’s to cut China out of the international supply chain, but keep all of its existing allies together. And the goal of that is that we collectively are going to produce chips and sell them to 80% of the world economy; China’s going to try to produce chips using less advanced machines and sell it domestically to 20% of the world’s economy. That puts China in a very bad competitive position: smaller market, worse machine tools, starting from a position of backwardness. It’s a race that China doesn’t look likely to win.
FS: In the next five years’ time, do you think there will be a major military standoff in the area around Taiwan, which would lead to major global hostility?
CM: I think the most likely outcome is that we have a period of tension, but we avoid a major military standoff. But if you asked me to put a probability on it, I’d give you a 20% probability over five years. And that’s a much higher probability than I put on it five years ago. I think — if you accept my probability of 20% — a 20% probability of both a very dangerous military situation and an economic crisis that would be equivalent to the Great Depression in terms of its shock to manufacturing: we ought to be willing to spend a lot of money, diplomatic attention and military resources to avert this type of crisis. My fear is that we’re not spending nearly enough given that the probability is far from zero. And the magnitude of the shock would be catastrophic.
Chris Miller is the author of Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology and an Associate Professor of International History at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University
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SubscribeI watched this interview on youtube. I’m not sure why there isn’t a link in the transcript.
I thought it was an excellent interview. The interviewee was down to earth and knew what he was talking about, and Freddie asked all the right questions.
One question Freddie could have pressed harder on was why did the West allow Taiwan to become so central to global chip production? Part of the answer seems to be that, up until about a decade ago, the chance of China seriously threatening Taiwan’s autonomy seemed slim because of US military superiority. Also, by implication based on other remarks by Chris Miller, the process is so complex and expensive only a national government could replicate what Taiwan achieved and probably no country wanted to undertake the task.
Still, having so much advanced chip production location in a small, vulnerable island looks like a self-inflicted wound by the West…
I agree with Freddie’s conclusion that a 20% chance of major conflict over Taiwan in the next five years is uncomfortably high. But what can we now do that won’t further antagonize China and perhaps increase the chance of war?
More interviews like these, Unherd.
Reminds me of rather of when we ‘swapped’ Heligoland for Zanzibar in 1890, and hey presto the Germans start building “The High Seas Fleet”.
It would be just as easy to ask how they let China become the supplier of 80% of rare-earth metals, or why the west elected to offshored most every kind of manufacturing to the third world and Asia. The answer is the same in each case, other nations adopted the rules of globalism but not the ideology and took advantage of obvious holes in the system. They used what they had, cheap and plentiful labor combined with a more pragmatic and less idealistic attitude towards environmental concerns and took advantage of short term thinking from western leadership. As unbelievable as it sounds, the long-term effects of deindustrialization were never seriously considered. In this case, Taiwan’s government recognized the importance of the chip industry earlier than others and subsidized the industry heavily allowing their companies an advantage, government money, that others were not given, distorting economic outcomes in their favor, presumably for the purposes of building geopolitical power and staving off possible annexation. Simply put, they exploited globalism in the same way their would-be conquerors did, with the advantage of being on friendlier terms with the nations who control chip technology (US and Japan). I admire Taiwan for building a healthy and prosperous nation under difficult conditions (having a large, belligerent neighbor determined to conquer your people does tend to encourage pragmatic thinking). They simply saw an opportunity and took it. More broadly though, this is the world globalism has made for us. It may have made us wealthier in immediate material terms, but we’re paying for its failures in other ways.
Few are aware that the Taiwanese also sponsored the creation of the ERSO PC BIOS chip by reverse engineering of the original IBM BIOS chip. The government then stood behind legal challenges. The PC explosion was created by the numerous clones starting in the late 70’s as witnessed by the page count of ads in “Computer Shopper” of the period. Many Taiwan companies rose to meet demand, most now gone. Home PC board assembly was common in Taiwan before automation and before labor costs drove production to China. The creation of TMSC is in line with the government and there were adequate skilled people to start as Taiwan moved to higher value products. The key has been a real partnership between industry and government over a long period; something lacking in the US where one party detests manufacturing.
US tool manufacturers are low rate, high value producers making highly specialized equipment. They began as suppliers to US chip makers to gain a foothold and now dominate the market along with a few EU makers.
Few are aware that the Taiwanese also sponsored the creation of the ERSO PC BIOS chip by reverse engineering of the original IBM BIOS chip. The government then stood behind legal challenges. The PC explosion was created by the numerous clones starting in the late 70’s as witnessed by the page count of ads in “Computer Shopper” of the period. Many Taiwan companies rose to meet demand, most now gone. Home PC board assembly was common in Taiwan before automation and before labor costs drove production to China. The creation of TMSC is in line with the government and there were adequate skilled people to start as Taiwan moved to higher value products. The key has been a real partnership between industry and government over a long period; something lacking in the US where one party detests manufacturing.
US tool manufacturers are low rate, high value producers making highly specialized equipment. They began as suppliers to US chip makers to gain a foothold and now dominate the market along with a few EU makers.
Reminds me of rather of when we ‘swapped’ Heligoland for Zanzibar in 1890, and hey presto the Germans start building “The High Seas Fleet”.
It would be just as easy to ask how they let China become the supplier of 80% of rare-earth metals, or why the west elected to offshored most every kind of manufacturing to the third world and Asia. The answer is the same in each case, other nations adopted the rules of globalism but not the ideology and took advantage of obvious holes in the system. They used what they had, cheap and plentiful labor combined with a more pragmatic and less idealistic attitude towards environmental concerns and took advantage of short term thinking from western leadership. As unbelievable as it sounds, the long-term effects of deindustrialization were never seriously considered. In this case, Taiwan’s government recognized the importance of the chip industry earlier than others and subsidized the industry heavily allowing their companies an advantage, government money, that others were not given, distorting economic outcomes in their favor, presumably for the purposes of building geopolitical power and staving off possible annexation. Simply put, they exploited globalism in the same way their would-be conquerors did, with the advantage of being on friendlier terms with the nations who control chip technology (US and Japan). I admire Taiwan for building a healthy and prosperous nation under difficult conditions (having a large, belligerent neighbor determined to conquer your people does tend to encourage pragmatic thinking). They simply saw an opportunity and took it. More broadly though, this is the world globalism has made for us. It may have made us wealthier in immediate material terms, but we’re paying for its failures in other ways.
I watched this interview on youtube. I’m not sure why there isn’t a link in the transcript.
I thought it was an excellent interview. The interviewee was down to earth and knew what he was talking about, and Freddie asked all the right questions.
One question Freddie could have pressed harder on was why did the West allow Taiwan to become so central to global chip production? Part of the answer seems to be that, up until about a decade ago, the chance of China seriously threatening Taiwan’s autonomy seemed slim because of US military superiority. Also, by implication based on other remarks by Chris Miller, the process is so complex and expensive only a national government could replicate what Taiwan achieved and probably no country wanted to undertake the task.
Still, having so much advanced chip production location in a small, vulnerable island looks like a self-inflicted wound by the West…
I agree with Freddie’s conclusion that a 20% chance of major conflict over Taiwan in the next five years is uncomfortably high. But what can we now do that won’t further antagonize China and perhaps increase the chance of war?
More interviews like these, Unherd.
This article only details two aspects of the US chip industry sanctions on China:
R1: Restricting access to purchase high end chips
R2: Restricting access to the most advanced (EUV) lithography machines (from ASSML in the Netherlands)
It misses two other important policies:
R3: Preventing Chinese chip design companies from using leading edge processes at Western fabs (chip manufacturing plants) (principally TSMC in Taiwan). Huawei’s mobile phone chip subsidiary HiSilicon lost access to TSMC over a year ago. That’s a serious problem for them.
R4: Denying access to leading edge chip design tools (software) needed to design the very latest/smallest geometry chips
These last two points are also critical. It is impossible to design the most advanced chips without the required software *and technical support* (which will also be denied). And just as with the advanced lithography equipment, it will prove impossible for the Chinese to catch up now. Producing the required software and machines needs years of development (and debugging) and tens of billions of dollars. And they won’t have a large enough market to recover the costs, even if they could.
The Chinese have only themselves to blame. They’ve been stealing Western technology for at least two decades and destroying some of our high tech industries (telecoms) as a result.
Agree with your points.
One interesting issue is what happens outside of the 5 year timeline touted, where we may start to see other technologies (perforce) compete with lithographic EUV – assuming its death has not been exaggerated once again.
China will still be behind with the west on a technical footing but if they backed something new now (Gan or optronics or other silver bullet), they’d at least have a chance to compete – they certainly can’t with existing R&D and fabrication plants as the technology and infrastructure isn’t there.
Not saying I’d bet on it, but a long term strategy is probably their only option (other than annexation).
Let’s hope there isn’t a ‘DREADNOUGHT’ moment.
I often think the Asian culture where failure is not often tolerated is a hindrance to innovation. Very hard to change cultural values. Many patents in Asia are “me too” adjustments possible because of culture. Just my opinion.
Let’s hope there isn’t a ‘DREADNOUGHT’ moment.
I often think the Asian culture where failure is not often tolerated is a hindrance to innovation. Very hard to change cultural values. Many patents in Asia are “me too” adjustments possible because of culture. Just my opinion.
Fascinating, thank you.
I knew none of this so it is most encouraging.
This happens to be my industry, so for once I’m commenting on something I have real experience in. But that’s no guarantee of being correct – as always opinions vary even amongst those with experience.
On the prevailing pessimism in the West. I do find the default assumption that the leaders of the West are always clueless and incompetent while those in places like Russia and China are on the ball baffling. How did we end up being so much more free and wealthy if we had worse leaders ?
Leaders in the west have typically been more hands off.
Agreed! I think the legacy of The Great War has much to answer for, particularly as it also sired WWII.
However on balance ‘we’ the English/Anglo-sphere or whatever you want to calls us have done rather well* over the past four centuries.(starting in 1603 in fact.)
As for Russia and China our ‘academics have been singing their praises from 1917 onwards. A more self-hating bunch would be hard to imagine. Oiks in the true (Greek) meaning of the word.
(* Remembering off course the old adage “self praise is no recommendation!”)
Leaders in the west have typically been more hands off.
Agreed! I think the legacy of The Great War has much to answer for, particularly as it also sired WWII.
However on balance ‘we’ the English/Anglo-sphere or whatever you want to calls us have done rather well* over the past four centuries.(starting in 1603 in fact.)
As for Russia and China our ‘academics have been singing their praises from 1917 onwards. A more self-hating bunch would be hard to imagine. Oiks in the true (Greek) meaning of the word.
(* Remembering off course the old adage “self praise is no recommendation!”)
This happens to be my industry, so for once I’m commenting on something I have real experience in. But that’s no guarantee of being correct – as always opinions vary even amongst those with experience.
On the prevailing pessimism in the West. I do find the default assumption that the leaders of the West are always clueless and incompetent while those in places like Russia and China are on the ball baffling. How did we end up being so much more free and wealthy if we had worse leaders ?
Agree with your points.
One interesting issue is what happens outside of the 5 year timeline touted, where we may start to see other technologies (perforce) compete with lithographic EUV – assuming its death has not been exaggerated once again.
China will still be behind with the west on a technical footing but if they backed something new now (Gan or optronics or other silver bullet), they’d at least have a chance to compete – they certainly can’t with existing R&D and fabrication plants as the technology and infrastructure isn’t there.
Not saying I’d bet on it, but a long term strategy is probably their only option (other than annexation).
Fascinating, thank you.
I knew none of this so it is most encouraging.
This article only details two aspects of the US chip industry sanctions on China:
R1: Restricting access to purchase high end chips
R2: Restricting access to the most advanced (EUV) lithography machines (from ASSML in the Netherlands)
It misses two other important policies:
R3: Preventing Chinese chip design companies from using leading edge processes at Western fabs (chip manufacturing plants) (principally TSMC in Taiwan). Huawei’s mobile phone chip subsidiary HiSilicon lost access to TSMC over a year ago. That’s a serious problem for them.
R4: Denying access to leading edge chip design tools (software) needed to design the very latest/smallest geometry chips
These last two points are also critical. It is impossible to design the most advanced chips without the required software *and technical support* (which will also be denied). And just as with the advanced lithography equipment, it will prove impossible for the Chinese to catch up now. Producing the required software and machines needs years of development (and debugging) and tens of billions of dollars. And they won’t have a large enough market to recover the costs, even if they could.
The Chinese have only themselves to blame. They’ve been stealing Western technology for at least two decades and destroying some of our high tech industries (telecoms) as a result.
Really good Article. Thank you.
Grateful if risk has dropped to 20%. Had seen informed commentary suggest higher. Albeit Putin’s Ukraine experience will have been risk-informative for Xi.
CM refers to need to rapidly strengthen deterrence. AUKUS announcement yesterday on Subs too slow but nonetheless clear message and direction. Still a need to turn Taiwan into a porcupine, discretely initially if poss and then visibly. Deterrence has to be demonstrable.
Really good Article. Thank you.
Grateful if risk has dropped to 20%. Had seen informed commentary suggest higher. Albeit Putin’s Ukraine experience will have been risk-informative for Xi.
CM refers to need to rapidly strengthen deterrence. AUKUS announcement yesterday on Subs too slow but nonetheless clear message and direction. Still a need to turn Taiwan into a porcupine, discretely initially if poss and then visibly. Deterrence has to be demonstrable.
Excellent interview…..one of the most informative I’ve heard in a long while, thanks. This subject seems to have been chronically under-analysed in the media until now….
Excellent interview…..one of the most informative I’ve heard in a long while, thanks. This subject seems to have been chronically under-analysed in the media until now….
Be a lot worse than the Great Depression. They still had ag and industry – they just lacked the people with money to buy stuff. This is 100% opposite.
This situation is supply side, not demand side driven.
This means billions starving as industry and products are stopped in their tracks. But whatever – this guy has several things I do not agree with.
”Two decades ago, it was obvious, in the event of world war, who would win. Today, it is not at all obvious who would win. That uncertainty created by our decision to let our military advantages over China deteriorate”
China cannot win a war – not a real War, because like Japan, Like UK in WWII the vital resources (oil, metals, food…) have to get there – and they have to go through a tiny gap in the Malacca straits – and they can easily be Blockaded by Subs and missiles. China would starve.
But they can do MAD, not just Nuk ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’ but with chips too, and all kinds of manufacturing. So I do not see it…. Unless the Schwab/Gates/WEF Eugenics global de-population thing is due, then it is assured to happen.
Let’s face it; any good dictator worth his salt can take the nuke option. The idea of nukes is that everybody is afraid to use them. One day somebody will take that option.
If I was Mr China or Mr North Korea and wanted to show that I meant business, I wouldn’t nuke LA or New York. I’d choose somewhere in Europe because Europe can’t fight back. So there is NATO in theory but a theory is what it is.
Let’s face it; any good dictator worth his salt can take the nuke option. The idea of nukes is that everybody is afraid to use them. One day somebody will take that option.
If I was Mr China or Mr North Korea and wanted to show that I meant business, I wouldn’t nuke LA or New York. I’d choose somewhere in Europe because Europe can’t fight back. So there is NATO in theory but a theory is what it is.
Be a lot worse than the Great Depression. They still had ag and industry – they just lacked the people with money to buy stuff. This is 100% opposite.
This situation is supply side, not demand side driven.
This means billions starving as industry and products are stopped in their tracks. But whatever – this guy has several things I do not agree with.
”Two decades ago, it was obvious, in the event of world war, who would win. Today, it is not at all obvious who would win. That uncertainty created by our decision to let our military advantages over China deteriorate”
China cannot win a war – not a real War, because like Japan, Like UK in WWII the vital resources (oil, metals, food…) have to get there – and they have to go through a tiny gap in the Malacca straits – and they can easily be Blockaded by Subs and missiles. China would starve.
But they can do MAD, not just Nuk ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’ but with chips too, and all kinds of manufacturing. So I do not see it…. Unless the Schwab/Gates/WEF Eugenics global de-population thing is due, then it is assured to happen.
This read like a well informed and measured article – I liked it.
I do wonder however whether this interview comes with the wrong conclusion about the probability of a conflict. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbour it wasn’t the great likelihood of its success that motivated them to do it – it was rather that any time later would have guaranteed failure that they decided to take the bad odds. Incapacitating the Pacific fleet would give Japan at least an initial advantage, and another roll of the dice going forward.
China is in a similar situation. It’s caught in the AI revolution without the proper investment just at the wrong time. Xi Jinping has already broken the rules on limits on his term, managed to consolidate his control, and was hoping to make his signature achievement giving China a great power peer status with US ending their “humiliation”. If the sanctions are successful, they turn the tide pushing China back to subservient status to the West. Attacking Taiwan now would give China a tactical advantage by constraining chip supply, even perhaps allow China to acquire some of the technology, at the very least greatly disrupt the Western economy for a long time. China may just decide to go for the roll of the dice instead of facing guaranteed decline.
This read like a well informed and measured article – I liked it.
I do wonder however whether this interview comes with the wrong conclusion about the probability of a conflict. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbour it wasn’t the great likelihood of its success that motivated them to do it – it was rather that any time later would have guaranteed failure that they decided to take the bad odds. Incapacitating the Pacific fleet would give Japan at least an initial advantage, and another roll of the dice going forward.
China is in a similar situation. It’s caught in the AI revolution without the proper investment just at the wrong time. Xi Jinping has already broken the rules on limits on his term, managed to consolidate his control, and was hoping to make his signature achievement giving China a great power peer status with US ending their “humiliation”. If the sanctions are successful, they turn the tide pushing China back to subservient status to the West. Attacking Taiwan now would give China a tactical advantage by constraining chip supply, even perhaps allow China to acquire some of the technology, at the very least greatly disrupt the Western economy for a long time. China may just decide to go for the roll of the dice instead of facing guaranteed decline.
Let’s hope we don’t see a day where Chinese landing craft are crossing the Taiwan strait, because regardless of rhetoric, the strategic reality is that the US and probably most of the world besides would be at war the following day. I believe the USA should make it clear, publicly or discretely, to the Chinese government that a military action across the Taiwan strait would be met with immediate retaliation without ruling out a nuclear response. That is, to my mind, the best chance we have of ‘convincing’ the CCP that Taiwan isn’t worth it. MAD has prevented WWIII for almost eight decades. Go with what works.
Let’s hope we don’t see a day where Chinese landing craft are crossing the Taiwan strait, because regardless of rhetoric, the strategic reality is that the US and probably most of the world besides would be at war the following day. I believe the USA should make it clear, publicly or discretely, to the Chinese government that a military action across the Taiwan strait would be met with immediate retaliation without ruling out a nuclear response. That is, to my mind, the best chance we have of ‘convincing’ the CCP that Taiwan isn’t worth it. MAD has prevented WWIII for almost eight decades. Go with what works.
Unfortunately, China already has very, very, very advanced chips.
Like the ones that control the idiot’s lantern in your pocket.
https://www.google.com/search?q=the+wire+doctor+who&sxsrf=APwXEdeMcjtGRO6wSKBaf1F4gi126wYBFA%3A1682887392376&ei=4NJOZJ7RFoWXhbIPqdSRmAo&oq=The+Wire+d&gs_lcp=Cgxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAQARgFMggIABCKBRCRAjIICAAQigUQkQIyCAgAEIoFEJECMggIABCKBRCRAjIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDoKCAAQRxDWBBCwAzoKCAAQigUQsQMQQzoHCC4QigUQQzoHCAAQigUQQzoLCAAQgAQQsQMQgwE6BggAEBYQHjoICAAQFhAeEA86CAgAEIoFEIYDSgQIQRgAUP8MWIJGYMZtaAJwAXgAgAFxiAGiApIBAzIuMZgBAKABAcgBCMABAQ&sclient=gws-wiz-serp#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:15887869,vid:K5lxc5zXLLU
They read all your money transactions.
They tell Xi Jin Ping how much you drink.
And they can stop you boarding Michael O’Leary’s aeroplanes and exercising your rights to free movement.
Be afraid.
Be very afraid.
This really bothered me – this is 100% political interjecting, and also not true where he talks of MAD.
”But there’s lots of examples of wars in history that have been waged by leaders who have decided the economic costs were worth it, or underestimated the economic costs — look at Putin, for example. I think anyone who is betting on “mutual-assured economic destruction” to maintain the peace doesn’t have much grounding in history on which to base that faith.”
Well it was Biden who triggered MAD – and not against USA, USA profits from the Ukraine war in a twisted way and Russia does OK too – No – the Mutually Assured Destruction Biden ushered in with his $130,000,000,000 of un-audited aid, and real time targeting and surveillance, to one of the most corrupt nations on earth is the assured destruction to the EU and Ukraine.
Putin thought he could go in, kill the corrupt puppet leaders and the Oligarchs – replace them with his puppet ones who would not join EU and NATO, and leave Ukraine intact.
Biden triggered MAD. He decided a proxy war which 100% destroyed Ukraine and its people, and also Europe to a high degree economically, was a good idea. Putin just went in to straighten out some things. Biden triggered MAD. But a very weird kind of MAD – one where the two antagonists are not really harmed – but leave everyone else flattened, and the actual potential enemy, China, better off.
Biden, he has a different way of looking on the world than I do.
Biden didn’t send the tanks in, Putin did. Biden hasn’t tried to flatten entire cities with cruise missiles, again that falls entirely on the Kremlin. There have been many times throughout history when America and the west have been at fault and behaved despicably, but this isn’t one of them
Biden/the US stopped the signing of a peace agreement on multiple occasions – before and right after the start of the war (by way of Britains favorite clown), so let’s not sell the Wests contribution to this atrocity of a war short.
And it didn’t start in February 2022, despite what the western media would have us believe.
You’re correct, the Russians invaded Crimea and sent troops to eastern Ukraine years before
Indeed, in response to a US-inspired coup and Bush’s earlier insistence that Ukraine would join NATO. Recency bias is of course useful when trying to rewrite history.
Indeed, in response to a US-inspired coup and Bush’s earlier insistence that Ukraine would join NATO. Recency bias is of course useful when trying to rewrite history.
You’re correct, the Russians invaded Crimea and sent troops to eastern Ukraine years before
Care to provide any evidence that the UK blocked the Ukrainians from signing a peace treaty that they were desperate to accept?
Well, I suspect not even a transcript, video and forensic evidence from the conversation between BoJo and Zelenskyy would suffice as evidence, but in the interest of open debate I provide you with the following:
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/09/02/diplomacy-watch-why-did-the-west-stop-a-peace-deal-in-ukraine/
The article talks about an existing (but tentative) agreement between both sides, with no less a source than Fiona Hill, that was (in all likelihood) torpedoed by Boris the flying Fox:
“Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement,” wrote Fiona Hill and Angela Stent. “Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbas region and all of Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.”
So, will you now tell me how this would have been worse than the current situation considering the dead, the destruction, the brain drain and the lost swathes of land (in addition to adverse global effects for basically everyone except the US and perhaps China)?
Or will you impugn the source?
Either way, it’ll still get worse before it gets better and that deal strikes me as superior to almost anything the Ukrainians can hope for.
.
I have, but unfortunately the Bot has deemed it inadmissible :/
Maybe it’ll still show up later
.
Well, I suspect not even a transcript, video and forensic evidence from the conversation between BoJo and Zelenskyy would suffice as evidence, but in the interest of open debate I provide you with the following:
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/09/02/diplomacy-watch-why-did-the-west-stop-a-peace-deal-in-ukraine/
The article talks about an existing (but tentative) agreement between both sides, with no less a source than Fiona Hill, that was (in all likelihood) torpedoed by Boris the flying Fox:
“Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement,” wrote Fiona Hill and Angela Stent. “Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbas region and all of Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.”
So, will you now tell me how this would have been worse than the current situation considering the dead, the destruction, the brain drain and the lost swathes of land (in addition to adverse global effects for basically everyone except the US and perhaps China)?
Or will you impugn the source?
Either way, it’ll still get worse before it gets better and that deal strikes me as superior to almost anything the Ukrainians can hope for.
.
I have, but unfortunately the Bot has deemed it inadmissible :/
Maybe it’ll still show up later
.
And it didn’t start in February 2022, despite what the western media would have us believe.
Care to provide any evidence that the UK blocked the Ukrainians from signing a peace treaty that they were desperate to accept?
Biden/the US stopped the signing of a peace agreement on multiple occasions – before and right after the start of the war (by way of Britains favorite clown), so let’s not sell the Wests contribution to this atrocity of a war short.
Biden didn’t send the tanks in, Putin did. Biden hasn’t tried to flatten entire cities with cruise missiles, again that falls entirely on the Kremlin. There have been many times throughout history when America and the west have been at fault and behaved despicably, but this isn’t one of them
This really bothered me – this is 100% political interjecting, and also not true where he talks of MAD.
”But there’s lots of examples of wars in history that have been waged by leaders who have decided the economic costs were worth it, or underestimated the economic costs — look at Putin, for example. I think anyone who is betting on “mutual-assured economic destruction” to maintain the peace doesn’t have much grounding in history on which to base that faith.”
Well it was Biden who triggered MAD – and not against USA, USA profits from the Ukraine war in a twisted way and Russia does OK too – No – the Mutually Assured Destruction Biden ushered in with his $130,000,000,000 of un-audited aid, and real time targeting and surveillance, to one of the most corrupt nations on earth is the assured destruction to the EU and Ukraine.
Putin thought he could go in, kill the corrupt puppet leaders and the Oligarchs – replace them with his puppet ones who would not join EU and NATO, and leave Ukraine intact.
Biden triggered MAD. He decided a proxy war which 100% destroyed Ukraine and its people, and also Europe to a high degree economically, was a good idea. Putin just went in to straighten out some things. Biden triggered MAD. But a very weird kind of MAD – one where the two antagonists are not really harmed – but leave everyone else flattened, and the actual potential enemy, China, better off.
Biden, he has a different way of looking on the world than I do.