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Comment by snek_case | Hacker News Reader

China has their own fabs. They are behind TSMC in terms of technology, but that doesn't mean they don't have fabs. They're currently ~7nm AFAIK. That's behind TSMC, but also not useless. They are obviously trying hard to catch up. I don't think we should just imagine that they never will. China has a lot of smart engineers and they know how strategically important chip manufacturing is.

This is like this funny idea people had in the early 2000s that China would continue to manufacture most US technology but they could never design their own competitive tech. Why would anyone think that?

Wrt invading Taiwan, I don't think there is any way China can get TSMC intact. If they do invade Taiwan (please God no), it would be a horrible bloodbath. Deaths in the hundreds of thousands and probably relentless bombing. Taiwan would likely destroy its own fabs to avoid them being taken. It would be sad and horrible.

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If they invade Taiwan, we will scuttle the plants and direct ASML to disable their machines which they will do because that’s the condition under which we gave them the tech. They’re not going to get it this way.

They’ll just catch the next wave of tech or eventually break into EUV.

imo the most likely answer is that asml funds a second source for the optics that isn't US controlled and starts shipping to China. The US is losing influence fast.

It would likely take ASML decades to develop an alternative EUV light source not encumbered by US defense technology, at which time it may not matter.

Everyone is still dependent on a single American manufacturer for this tech after decades of development. This strongly suggests that it is considerably more difficult than just "funding a second source".

We’re not above stuxnetting them if it comes to it. They operate at the pleasure of the US with US tech.

> Wrt invading Taiwan, I don't think there is any way China can get TSMC intact.

There are so many trade and manufacturing links between China and Taiwan that an outright war would be economically disastrous for both countries.

That doesn't mean they won't try anyway; political ideology often trumps rational planning.

> Why would anyone think that?

That'd be the belief in good old American exceptionalism. Up until recently, a common meme on HN was "freedom" is fundamental to innovation, and naturally the country with the most Freedom(TM) wins. This even persisted after it was clear that DJI was kicking all kinds of ass, outcompeting multiple western drone companies.

It's probably true that free enterprise helps a lot, but China has that in large part. Even though the CCP calls itself communist, China is very capitalist in a number of ways. But I guess China is showing us that capitalism can exist without democracy.

> capitalism can exist without democracy.

It's not exactly a new idea. This was the CIA's operating principle in the western hemisphere since before the cold war.

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