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Comment by foooorsyth | Hacker News Reader

So because China will steal it eventually, we should just give it away now? That’s your argument?

>clearly China is capable of catching up with ASML’s tooling

The only thing clear to me is precisely the opposite. Nobody has been able to catch up with ASML, including China. If China is capable of catching up on their own (without espionage), why would Taiwan even matter? Why would export controls on ASML tooling even matter?

They matter because ASML and TSMC are companies built on secret know-how that others can’t replicate. Do we really need to explain on HN that companies are built on secrets?

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> why would Taiwan even matter?

The CCP has fully subscribed to irredentism and it has popular support in the mainland. Taiwan will never not matter.

But otherwise I agree with the rest of your argument.

> CCP has fully subscribed to irredentism and it has popular support in the mainland

Plenty of countries, particularly those in an economic slump, have popular support for stupid wars. That changes quickly when the war is started and the costs come home.

This doesn’t stop them from starting stupid wars for stupid reasons. Losing a war is not even a guarantee that they will waive their future territorial ambitions or concessions just as two examples: Spain and Gibraltar or Argentina and the Falklands.

> Argentina and the Falklands

This is the example Xi, and those around him, would be looking to.

Yeah. Irredentism is a fundamentally emotional ideology borne from nationalism. It doesn’t have to make sense, it just has to be a rallying cry.

> It doesn’t have to make sense, it just has to be a rallying cry.

Correct. It's for domestic consumption. By the time leadership is weak enough to be compelled into playing it out, chances are it won't make military sense.

The hope is that it not making military sense prevents military action. We don’t have any such promise from reality, or much historic precedent to depend on, and in the case of the PRC and Taiwan, it is CCP leadership which is angling for a takeover of the independent nation of Taiwan and the eradication of the Republic of China.

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