What he ISN’T being told, and may be too ice-cream besotted to realize, is that he has joined Democrats Wilson and Roosevelt in having committed heinous civil-rights offenses against his fellow Americans in order to gain political advantage.

The Democrat party must be destroyed before it destroys America.

I guess they might reach the dams with missiles. Thing is they’ll need everything they’ve got for staging areas. China is big enough to absorb that kind of hit in the rear at 3 Gorges and just keep on trucking. Again… it’s 2021. They don’t always get through these days.. lots of stuff exists to interdict them. And if it’s missiles, Fujian Province is full of PLA missile artillery for obvious reasons.

I’ve vacationed there a lot. Tunnels everywhere. Necessary given the terrain… but still a lot of tunnels. Not just for transport and decoration, I guess :).

But good deal of this is CKS KMT Glory Days Infrastructure. One doesn’t get the feeling that there’s much of the whole Swiss National Redoubt vibe nowadays.

Do you recall last Taiwan Straits Crisis? China announced that it was going to lob a few surface to surface missiles into the sea offshore of the ports. And did so. You can guess what happens to vessel insurance policies when that happens. Everything stops. Lots of things China can do to mess with Taiwan without trying on the Normandy thing.

What really bothers me about Taiwan is the submarines. Look them up. I get that it’s difficult for them to source them given China’s aggro toward any vendors… but seriously to me this tells me they’re not totally serious about it.

TSMC is more reason to go take the place. You don’t need the Fabs…. Although nice to have. You need the PEOPLE who know the secret sauce recipes make TSMC’s fabs have profitable yields down at 3-4nm…. All the equipment goes into the Fabs you can buy on the open market. Make them an offer they can’t refuse, and Bob’s your Uncle in 2-3 years — price well worth paying.

I’ve been thinking that the smart thing to do in the event of war would be to relocate and / or kill the key guys at TSMC who know the recipes and then level their 4nm Fabs.

Do you seriously think Pozzed USA (hello Intel which has majorly $#%^ed the PC Pooch and missed the boat on 4nm) will recover first if TSMC can’t produce for a year or three? In your dreams.

So the calculus is still iffy. Put the hurt on Taiwan and take some temporary pain and Win Bigly maybe. Or maybe not. Smart move is not to do it… but geopolitics rarely involves people doing the smart thing… often the needful thing or the insane thing.

TSMC is the most critical strategic asset in the world in 2021… I’ve been harping on about that from time to time here in comments anddd… crickets.

Interestingly just read an article in Asia Times (David Goldman / Spengler’s property) suggesting that first thing would happen in an escalation would be that TW Straight would be mined from the air by B52s. Makes sense.

FWIW much of the world can get by on 20nm and up legacy process chips. Any clown with a few billion and a Fab and no Diversity Hires can excrete these like a sausage factory. But the supercomputing, high end cellphones, graphics chips, deep learning type stuff — sure… you want be down at 4nm yesterday to be in with a chance.

Why such strength? Technology leading etching of the fastest microchips using the smallest wavelengths of UV down to 3 nanometers, creating the fastest such electronic devices.

“Most of the leading fabless semiconductor companies such as AMD, Apple, ARM, Broadcom, Marvell, MediaTek, Nvidia, and Qualcomm are customers of TSMC.” (Wikipedia)

And therefore Red China depends on TSMC in order to grow it’s export market.

But if that ends, which invasion of Taiwan would do, then China’s export power ends.

Until erosion within Taiwan succeeds, hi tech gives the little giant a defensive edge against enormous China.

Any kind of even limited conflict and you can kiss goodbye to new iPhones and Laptops for a year or three. Don’t expect the Invisible Hand to just wave itself and make new fabs and factories and logistics chains appear.

It’s rather a long way to the Three Gorges. There are plenty of other dams, too, admittedly. But getting to them and lobbing some ordnance might be a bit of a job. The Chinese do have modern air defences, you know. Lots of them. The US could certainly take out the dams, but that costs LA or San Diego. Probably San Diego. LA is a net pox on the USA so why do a favour and obliterate it?

The sane thing is to wait and let economics and demographics and spread of GloboHomo Poz weaken Taiwan further — all the usual NGOs, Foundations, other Usual Suspects are to be found beavering away in Taipei… not to mention further American Decline. Eventually one would hope Taiwan would negotiate the best possible deal (won’t be very good and will get shafted anyway but beats having a year of death and misery due to destroyed critical infrastructure)

But if it comes to big picture calculus of whoever is ruling China having to take Taiwan immediately in order to head off domestic political challenge or instability, then all bets are off. For that reason alone should be thankful that Xi Jinping took out Bo Xilai (ex mayor of Chongqing) at the beginning of his reign — could have ended up with a Stalin – Kirov type popularity contest and Taiwan would have been the Football.

Anyway I’m not optimistic for TW’s chances. Lot of wishful thinking here about China’s demographic challenges and other all too real problems.. but Taiwan has whole bunch of internal contradictions and issues of its own — and remember that the biggest boosters of Plucky Little Taiwan Home of Gay Marriage and Freedom are wishful thinking Purveyors of the Poz. Blood and Iron beats Poz and Happy Feels every time.

Final point re the dams and infrastructure in China. You’re expecting Taiwanese billionaires to acquiesce in their government destroying their Mainland factories.