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Comment by throw1234651234 | Hacker News Reader

Russia supported by Iran vs Ukraine supported by every major Western Power.

China vs Taiwan standoff. China recently built a Taipei city center mock up in the desert. Taiwan controls 90%+ of global microchip production.

Recent Armenia vs Azerbaijan (supported by Turkey) war. More tension on border.

Israel levelled Gaza and killed 30,000 Palestinian civilians, and is striking Lebanon and Syria. Iran posturing back.

Posturing in Africa by Russia, France, and China.

North Korea being noisy as usual.

This is literally just the tip of the iceberg.

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TSMC controls 60% of global semiconductor production, not "90%+." If your argument is: "well, they control the advanced nodes!!" - if Taiwan is attacked, the things you're using these advanced chips for will no longer be relevant.

Missiles and radar powered by Intel/Altera chips will do the job just fine until more domestic fab capacity can be spun up. Most defense products are running on processes from two decades or more ago and are already legally forced to consider adversarial supply chain issues.

1. "well, they control the advanced nodes!!"" - it is: "Taiwan is home to 92% of the production of logic semiconductors whose components are smaller than 10 nanometers". (https://www.forbes.com/sites/katharinabuchholz/2023/01/13/ad...)

2. "the things you're using these advanced chips for will no longer be relevant", "Missiles and radar powered by Intel/Altera chips will do the job just fine until more domestic fab capacity can be spun up." Hard-disagree. US advantage is in high resolution AESA sensors, thermals, and fast advanced processing and comms. We aren't talking Tomahawks and PESA radars when it comes to competitive advantage.

Finally, there is a reason why domestic fab capacity is ramping up slowly in the US and Russia doesn't have such capability to speak of - it's hard and the major powers are behind.

Which defense contractor is using a sub-10nm process node for products? Every F35 chip is >90nm.

Which adversary would these chips yield an advantage against in a nuclear war?

Domestic fab capacity is ramping up slowly because these facilities are multi-billion-dollar, multi-decade endeavors. Intel's existing domestic fabs can make everything a war-fighting nation could need, capacity and capability-wise.

If true, and I have no reason to doubt you based on the accuracy of your previous messages, you have made your point. I definitely don't know the F-35 chip specs.

> Recent Armenia vs Azerbaijan (supported by Turkey) war. More tension on border.

I completely missed the Armenia/Azerbaijan conflict, but from what I can tell, tensions there don't seem likely to pull many other countries into it. Curious if you have thoughts on that.

> Posturing in Africa by Russia, France, and China.

Can you explain why this would lead to a potential world war? Most of what I can find about this is foreign countries vying for economic influence, which seems unlikely to burst into conflict, especially one that would become a world war.

See what BirAdam said - he is correct. Armenia / Azer is a direct cause of Russia being drawn into Ukraine, insofar that Russia "guaranteed" peace and had a contingent of "peacekeepers" in Armenia. What you see is an acceleration on conflicts in areas that were held back by global stability before. Now that Russia couldn't react, Azer backed by Turkey (and arguably other powers in the West) pushed Armenia out of Nagorny Karabakh. If Russia wasn't in Ukraine, this would likely look like Georgia in 2008 where Russia would use this as an excuse to take some land. Instead they did nothing, because they are busy.

Africa is too much to summarize - basically look into what Wagner and US PMCs were doing there. It's just more proxy conflict.

To support this, all of these proxy wars have covert units by the major nuclear powers conducting efforts directly against the other side. If these are ever exposed directly, political pressures will likely escalate the war. The moment one side starts to lose decidedly, nuclear war will likely occur.

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