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Comment by inverted_flag | Hacker News Reader

We’re fine until China invades Taiwan and the tech companies that prop up our economy can’t buy high-end chips anymore.

That's not the only threat.

China is racing to catch up. Sure, they're still behind, but as much as I dislike their autocratic government, they're actually smartly spending many many $billions to create a domestic chip design and manufacturing. And once they do that, well, it'll just be one more area in which we'll have handed leadership to the Chinese, except with much more critical ramifications.

There's been no indication of that yet.

No indication of what?

Agreed. This is nothing to worry about unless you have the ability to predict probable future events.

What if we simply do not let China invade Taiwan?

That’s probably not possible anymore given China’s increasingly large and advanced military.

So instead of spending _billions_ to support a domestic advanced chip design and production, we spend _trillions_ on a war with China?

But think of the profits of the defense contractors!/s

That’s incredibly expensive - orders of magnitude more than the CHIPS act – and likely isn’t even possible any more without massive loss of life. China does not have the huge but technologically unsophisticated military of the 1970-80s where American aircraft carriers could prevent an invasion. They’ve spent a lot of effort and espionage building up more equipment and I highly doubt they’ll prove a paper tiger like Russia. If it came to a shooting war with a large, well-equipped adversary with stealth aircraft, good missiles and drones, advanced submarines, etc. you’re looking at a lot of American casualties very quickly – and that’s before we consider a Pentagon headed by people who were selected for political loyalty rather than merit.

The CHIPS act is expensive, but I doubt we would do nothing if Taiwan was invaded, so we would end up spending money on both.

Let’s just save the money upfront by scrapping CHIPS and be ready to defend Taiwan from Chinese invasion? Trump was one of the first presidents to recognize Taiwan with a direct phone call.

I see it a bit differently: there’s no way to reliably deter a military invasion of Taiwan short of committing to a nuclear response - the Chinese military is too advanced to be stopped if they make a serious effort. That leaves the primary deterrent as economic: China depends on the global economy and would suffer significantly if they started a war of aggression. That becomes less of a deterrent when the President’s negotiating tactic with authoritarians is to give them what they want and envy their control over the country while his family members negotiate real estate deals. If the Chinese government thinks the United States won’t coordinate global sanctions, the risk is a lot lower.

The CHIPS act doesn’t deter conflict, but it does reduce the damage if it happens. Losing Taiwan now cuts off the most advanced processors in the world but if they’re making them in Arizona that goes from no supply to short supply with a straightforward path to scaling capacity. That’s a big improvement and it’s a fraction of the cost of a conflict.

Except the USA wouldn’t be satisfied with merely deterring conflict: they must ensure China doesn’t have any control over the most advanced processors in the world. And given that Trump is at the helm, nuclear conflict is a very real possibility China has to consider.

Under the aggressive stance of this administration, the CHIPS act doesn’t seem necessary.

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