Related: There is a massive TSMC factory being built in Japan right now. Take a look at the pictures, I've never seen this many cranes at one location:
Overall, divestment from china seems to be the goal. But this many new factories being produced is going to overproduce chips and eliminate any profitability; but inexpensive chips like this will most likely create a boon to the economies.
If the US was really serious about microchips being critical infrastructure we'd want over production. We have more roads than makes sense, we should have more chips on-hand than our critical power and data infrastructure needs to be rebuilt in the event of a catastrophe.
Strategies like this are how you end up with warehouses full of rusting parts. Government-funded overproduction leads to stockpiling at the taxpayer's expense.
It's been done many times before (weapons, food, etc.) and always leads to the exact same result: garbage heaps and no available resources when they're actually needed.
Offering companies grants and favors to encourage building real, sustainable, on-shore businesses has a much higher likelihood of success.
If you're dumping warehoused parts for cheap onto the market then the primary, profit making production will cease, so you will be back to square one, with the market flooded with the "overproduced" parts, leading to stalled new manufacturing, leading to depleted warehoused parts.
That being said, the commenter you replied to is wrong. Yes, warehousing occasionally does lead to massive wastage. But warehousing in general is common even if it means things will be slightly more expensive. That's how the military is able to run equipment whose manufacturing ended decades ago. That's how manufacturing worked worldwide before JIT became widespread.
The reason it might appear warehousing doesn't work is because the news will report instances where it's gone wrong. They're not gonna report the significantly greater instances where things are working just fine, because that's not news.
>Offering companies grants and favors to encourage building real, sustainable, on-shore businesses has a much higher likelihood of success.
So I'm arguing we should over-produce infrastructure and you're arguing we should over-produce capacity? OK but you have to continue offering the favors else the on-shore companies are just going to fold up when times get tough.
In a catastrophic event though I argue the over-provisioned group is better off than the group that can ramp up their production to post-catastrophe needs, the over-provisioned group has backup supplies and can produce at their normal rate, the over-capable group still needs time to spin up their production.
>If the US was really serious about microchips being critical infrastructure we'd want over production. We have more roads than makes sense, we should have more chips on-hand than our critical power and data infrastructure needs to be rebuilt in the event of a catastrophe.
You don't really want over production, you only want the factories and employees who know how to do the job.
That's the USA's mistake.
China's capitalist zones with very low taxes attracted all the factories because at the same time the USA was increasing taxes on the factories. What is left in the USA? Nothing. How do you wage war when you dont hold cards?
I saw some pictures a while ago on twitter of their new fab in Arizona under construction. It looked pretty similar. TSMC means business when they start building out. I don't want to imagine handling logistics on a construction site like this!
I had friends in Taiwan construction industry. They said TSMC will pay them extra just to make the construction time shorter, even 2x the cost. So you see firms love working with TSMC since they can get higher margin than typical factory construction.
TSMC is one of the key players in the 21st century. As we've seen with the supply chain issues from covid and the Ukrainian conflict, high quality semiconductors are a vital resource for modern nations' security and economies.
TSMC is the only entity that can make the highest quality chips (3nm being not actually 3nm, but just called that way for marketing purposes). If Taiwan looses that unique ability, they then loose much of the backing of NATO-aligned nations.
Taiwan bet the whole nation on TSMC, and it's paid off thus far. They're not likely to let go the trump cards they hold.
That’s quite the gamble. If a competitor develops a 5nm capability, Taiwan and TSMC are both screwed. The fact that only TSMC in Taiwan has this capability makes Taiwan a jucier target for the CCP. All this talk of reunification may be little more than a power grab. Control the best semiconductors, control the world.
What is TSMC/Taiwan’s unique capability? Aren’t ASML in Europe the ones making cutting edge EUV machines that drive process shrinks? I genuinely don’t know but I assume TSMC is mostly just good at scaling the production up economically.
Everyone can buy top of the line kitchenware, but you need great cooks to run 5 star restaurant. Its all about tuning to reach good yields, TSMC seems to excel at that.
"spare capacity" ? what do you mean ? Taiwan and South Korea are enough to supply the world demand? Well, it is still hard to get your hands on top-notch chips at a reasonable price whatever the news is saying...
You need certain machines for EUV. There's only one manufacturer (ASML) for those, and they're at capacity. And even if they wanted to scale up, there's only one manufacturer (Zeiss) for the EUV mirrors required for those machines, and all their capacity for the next years is already bought as well.
From what Intel put out in marketing materials, even at 14nm they had a very unreliable process with DUV. So, it might not be economical for the type of IC produced in these factories.
And I thought Intel's 14 was good too (after some ramping), which is why they stayed on it and iterated on it for so long, it was the 10nm process they had so much trouble with and the problems there are not generally reported to be with lithography but materials (cobalt, among other things, which they dropped in later nodes).
So I'm not sure what you are trying to argue. DUV has _proven_ to be economical down to about 7nm.
No, they don't have EUV. They have 7nm which they're doing with DUV, but they're hitting the same issues Intel did with abysmal yields and there's no guarantee that SMIC will be able to solve something Intel was never able to.
They do have EUV machines, albeit unreliable. Like you yourself mentioned the yields are the problem here.
This is really more of an engineering problem, you need more cycles for quality and reliability. But it's not something unsurmountable. Intel had no reason to try hard enough, Intel is never going to get sanctioned.
'Necessity is the mother of all innovation' might come to play here. If it comes down to living vs dying, people go to no ends to make things happen.
They have a build process video. A lot of knowledge is in folks heads as well from what they said - and nothing is "mass produced" really. And it's all at the absolute limits.
Zeiss covers their mirrors and lenses. The smoothness is extreme:
"If you were to enlarge such a mirror to the size of Germany, the largest unevenness – the Zugspitze, so to speak – would be a whole 0.1 millimeters high."
Then they have positioning / tilt accuracy.
"If one of these EUV mirrors were to redirect a laser beam and aim it at the Moon, it would be able to hit a ping pong ball on the Moon’s surface."
What they don't say is what the yield is on these. I've heard they have to try and make X to get y that can hit all the specs.
In the machines themselves didn't they have to build in both an electron microscope and an atomic force microscope for defect detection?
And then the environment they operate in is terrible from a wavelength absorption energy / contamination (tin?) issues etc.
Scaling up too much is a huge risk. Sure, people want a lot more EUV machines right now, but what if they don’t later? You can be left with a lot of expensive capital outlay that is going unused.
The semi industry is known for being very boom/bust so it’s best not to scale up too quick lest it kill your company.
The governments of the world should be throwing money at that so there's no way the company would go bankrupt. Perhaps 5 years of revenue. This seems clearly worth subsidizing.
ASML is (now) a company everyone has heard of, but like GP hinted at with their Zeiss comment, their supply chain is crazy deep as well. Getting everything scaled up across companies and countries is far from trivial.
That's true, but this is one of the most important techs we have. From the recent news, I see that TSMC wants ASML to scale up as well. TSMC announced that it will cut its capital expenditure by 10% due to supply problems. This announcement tanked ASML's share price.
My comment is that ASML is hitting their profit targets, they have backlog until 2024. If I were leading ASML or an employee of it, I wouldn't want to scale up. I am already hitting my targets, it's cozy, I have backlog until 2024, I have no competition.
The current situation is good for ASML and bad for us.
My comment is equally applicable for all companies in the supply chain that are monopolies.
Frustrating your consumers by not being able to supply their orders is how you stop being a monopoly. Eventually your backlog is long enough that it becomes worth your clients figuring out how to do what you do in-house, or a startup spots an opportunity. Being oversubscribed is a nice position to be in, but it doesn't mean you can rest on your laurels. (Plus, even if you're hitting your profit targets, leaving a boatload of money on the table has gotta be frustrating for at least some of ASML's employees and insiders).
Apparently ASML's internal processes are a mess, with everything consistently blocked by technical debt. I suspect this is the biggest blocker to their ability to scale their production faster.
this makes me wish I were like the Harvey Keitel character in Pulp Fiction, so I could straighten my tie, say "I'm on it", and hop into my vintage Mercedes convertible to go fix it.
It’s not software - they can’t just sprinkle some Kubernetes on it and scale. There are complex global supply chains involving extreme cutting-edge technology, engineering, and research.
Why didn't they simply build more chips in 2020 instead of shuttering all of those automobile factories?
At some point you're running into actual, real constraints, real bottlenecks in the supply chain, that will take years to resolve. You can't just scale up on short timeframes, no more than you can make a baby in a shorter time frame.
I know I might seem like a flat-earther with this, but I don't understand the chip crisis either. The explanation that many chipmakers went bankrupt after the automobile industry scaled down their orders seemed logical to me. But now that time has passed and we still have a chip crisis makes me think that there is something else.
We know that ASML doesn't ship high tech machines to China, it only ships low tech ones. China in return holds the world hostage by not producing enough chips. With enough subsidy, I think we could ramp up production to meet demand.
I also don't understand that the key companies are monopolys. It all seems a bit planned to me. Place the chip manufacturing company in Europe, chip factory in Taiwan, assemble in China. I feel like someone planned to distribute these technologies and infrastructure to avoid having one country having it all.
I know I cannot support my argument, but this is a gut feeling I have.
OTOH, nobody can reasonably explain why there are unsolveable real bottlenecks in the supply chain and why it would take years to resolve. Throw resources and people at it. This is not just one company with limited resources and a single goal. We should fund the semiconductor industry.
chips are critical for so many things, each "zone" of the world should have its own capabilities to build leading-edge chips, and probably with international collaboration on R&D (like ITER).
I don't think the global economy can "fund" properly more than the current number of actors of this industry, namely each of those zones would have to consider what would be its "local" leading-edge chip manufacturing as a "military defence"-thingy: making money out of it would be optional.
Yes, I agree, but the underlying IP is top secret. No one in the world can replicate it. I believe the leading forces want it to remain this way. (China shouldn't get its hand on high tech UEV machines because they might reverse engineer them, enforce export control laws etc.)
Because they're already working on the next gen (High NA EUV) which are a lot faster than the current EUV machines so developing extra capacity for the current gen will in the medium term reduce supply.
> Well, it is still hard to get your hands on top-notch chips at a reasonable price whatever the news is saying...
it's really not and actually the slowdown is so bad that AMD has had to reduce production, as well as other companies reducing memory/flash wafer starts etc.
it's not just intel or fake news, availability really hasn't been a problem for a year or more at this point, and if anything we're starting to shift into the "glut" phase of the bullwhip cycle.
yeah that's fair, the embedded market (both power, microcontrollers, and others) is still fucked up, but, the leading-edge market is in oversupply at this point and companies are starting to pull back production hard.
To produce 3nm and 5nm, you need to order fabs from ASML who has an enormous backlog..
On the other hand, 22nm and 28nm are almost 10 year old technologies and they are still used in cars, so much so that the industry is begging car manufacturers to get to newer nodes [1].
Cost... both to design for the node and to manufacture on it. A lot of products don't need the latest and greatest process node, they just need economical capacity.
Good enough. There is nothing wrong with existing parts and so why spend money to design new ones. Inflation is bad enough without having to pay for new engineering as well
So, can someone explain to me why I can't get ANY chips for anything at all? Everything is out of stock that I use in my designs (Audio processing equipment). microprocessors, microcontrollers, ADCs, DACs, audio codecs, memory. Even bread and butter diodes were hard to source a few months ago. You name it, Mouser/Farnell/Digikey/the manufacturer doesn't have it. And if they do, it's priced at 500% MSRP.
It may be "swinging the other way" but we're at the very depth of the curve right now, and lead times are frequently 12-18 months. I can't see any evidence that it's swinging back, personally, maybe someone else does (like the writer of this article).
I'm a ham radio guy who builds his own radios and a time nut.
For some of the designs that I'm building for clubs and amateur rocket clubs, my chip prices have gone from $3 to $60/chip. I've been able to get by with the stock of chips that I keep for repairs, but, to find chips in the price points that I generally work with (and by price point, I mean, I donate these to clubs/college rocket clubs at no cost, so, I try to keep my costs as low as my sanity/bom/weight permits), I've been finding chips that have 1/4 of the ram or 1/4 the functionality that I need, and reworking my code around the new limitations of what I can build with.
Thank the EE gods that I can get boards from China in about 3-5 days at a relatively sane price point: add in an open source pick and place system (OpenPnP) and a easy-bake reflow oven (hacked together from a freebie on craigslist) and it allows me to iterate over designs about once every two weeks or so, as long as I've got everything in stock. I've had to change my boards for the SI4467 (Sub Ghz RF Transceiver from Silicon Labs) three or four times in the last year alone. I find something that works, build another one, I'm out of stock on an item with no availability in sight on DigiKey/Mouser, so, it's botch wiring and praying that I can get it to work the way I want to until I refab my PCB, and then rinse, repeat.
I was absolutely confused regarding what kind of “tubes” this guy talks about. But when I saw 6N1P and recognized it immediately. Not the exact name, but the numbering scheme - each owner of a Russian TV would learn a numbering scheme for “tubes” sooner or later.
It’s interesting that Russia became (or remained as) an almost single supplier of this “outdated” technology.
But still, these “tubes” are rather a niche product in the audio equipment market, no? We probably can’t get a good enough insight looking just at them.
Very different areas of semi. The Economist article is focused on the high end, most advanced nodes and their fabless users like AMD, NVidia.
What you list is either analog of older nodes (~90 to 40nm). It's a very different world, with often different players. TSMC plays in the digital old nodes, but as I understand is not very motivated in investing in much new capacity, and try to push customers toward 22nm ULP (may work for some, but not all). Others are investing, but it takes time.
So you start to see a glut at the high end, but still constraints in the analog / old nodes.
When it comes to audio, it didn't help that AKM had a factory go up in flames[1], completely destroying most of it. It seems they've managed to shift production of some popular ADCs and DACs to other manufacturers[2] recently.
As for other chips, part of it is the toilet paper effect. From what I've heard, companies are buying 5x or 10x what they normally buy, just to be sure they got parts for production. Since the situation is still bad, I'm guessing people are still doing it.
Especially ICs are made in batches, so once it runs dry the manufacturer can't just print out another 10k units, they got other stuff lined up. I see for STM32s a lot of stock is expected at the end of this year or first half of next year, which lines up with what their CEO said that things will start stabilizing at the start of next year.
I'm just a hobbyist who knows a few EEs though, so might be wrong. But this is my impression.
Should we create a FDIC-like mechanism for chips, to reduce companies'incentive to "bank run" their vendors?
Have the federal reserve always stockpile 10% of circulating chips registered in the program.
"In late September Micron, an Idaho-based maker of memory chips, reported a 20% year-on-year fall in quarterly sales. A week later amd, a Californian chip designer, slashed its sales estimate for the third quarter by 16%. Within days Bloomberg reported that Intel plans to lay off thousands of staff, following a string of poor results"
But most of the article is about how they're building new fabs in America, right when sales to China are being restricted. So its about a future surge in supply and reduction in demand.
Parent is talking about distributor stock and you are talking about sales.
If your comment was accurate it would seem like we should have had distributor stock coming online after the pandemic shortages as companies push to get their orders in the queue before capacity goes offline due to conflict.
I’m curious with parent — my guess is just that the humans behind the companies got used to the profits and not sitting on inventory, which was always risky.
China already declared that it will use force in Taiwan if "possibilities for a peaceful reunification should be completely exhausted".
From Chinese Anti-Secession Law:
Article 8: In the event that the "Taiwan independence" secessionist forces should act under any name or by any means to cause the fact of Taiwan's secession from China, or that major incidents entailing Taiwan's secession from China should occur, or that possibilities for a peaceful reunification should be completely exhausted, the state shall employ non-peaceful means and other necessary measures to protect China's sovereignty and territorial integrity.
It is USA/EU strategic interest to avoid too deep dependency on Taiwan. We should support the status quo there as people of Taiwan are prosperous and peaceful nation. But we can't be caught off guard by China as EU was caught off guard by Russia.
This kind of bluster is a mainstay of Chinese geopolitics. The law was intentionally written in an open-ended way so that the party always gets the final say on what "completely exhausted" should mean. It serves as a propaganda tool internally and a point of leverage externally -- the party never needs to actually act on the threat for it to serve a valuable purpose.
With that being said, it's not that simple. Bluster isn't just a political tactic -- it also enables the military to slowly chip away at norms and edge closer towards a strategic advantage (e.g.: progressively violating more and more of Taiwan's sovereign airspace). If the party could have things their way, the military would merely continue pushing the envelope until one day a D-Day assault force seemingly randomly washes up on Taiwan's doorstep.
> progressively violating more and more of Taiwan's sovereign airspace
Just in terms of international law, the Chinese flights near Taiwan are provocative but don’t violate any laws. The U.S. and Russia still do this sort of thing all the time. An ADIZ is not sovereign airspace.
Launching so many missiles over a space of 36 hours that you entirely close airspace and waterways (and apparently over the island) is a little different from flying an airplane at the edge of controlled airspace.
That happened during the Pelosi trip in August, and the jingoists were angry it didn't go further. The likelihood of an effective air/sea embargo on Taiwan is more likely than an initial invasion.
International law is not a good example here because actually if you look at international law then Taiwan is part of China and formally it's considered as part of China by US, EU etc. Taiwan is not a state from perspective of international law so from this perspective it doesn't have sovereign airspace.
I thought China snubbed their noses at International rulings regarding the South China Sea? Now they get respect from same authorities?
Can't have it both ways. Join world system or reject it.
The PCA "rulings" aren't international law because UN (which PRC accept as international system) has no formal position on them / has not adopted any parts of the decision. Ergo, PRC's SCS position is consistent with international law - like the actual one at UN, not make believe US "rules based order" which was behind PCA lawfare campaign and the ongoing propaganda.
PRC is more firmly within bounds of the "world system", versus US who tries to enforce FONAPs despite not ratifying UNCLOS, and doesn't respect the kind of international law that it accused PRC of violating, see ITLOS ruling (an actual UN ruling) regarding UK/US military base on Chagos/Mauritius/Diego Garcia.
Exactly - they’re not constrained by the same four-ish year terms held in most democratic countries, and are able to play out twenty- and even fifty-year scenarios without too much domestic uncertainty.
That strategy manifests in that slow chipping away: they don’t need to do things all at once.
Exactly. Tbh its constantly surprising why Americans view the CCPs zero-covid policy as a failure. Even the most pessimistic reports (based on actual facts, not tabloid-driven wishful thinking) acknowledges that China has avoided at least 2 million+ deaths through their zero covid policy. Is the right to life no longer a human right? Or have a lot of us so internalized anti-China propaganda that we're no longer able to think logically?
That's not what "the right to life" means. There are lots of policy decisions which have tradeoffs that result in more or less life lost. For example, the government could require that all car engines have a maximum speed of 25 MPH. That would empirically reduce the # of lives lost in automobile accidents, but society has judged the tradeoff (in terms of convenience, transportation time/cost, etc.) to not be worth it -- and that tradeoff does not constitute "violating the right to life".
Are you honestly comparing France's relatively lackadaisical lockdowns to that of China (where entire cities experienced total lockdowns, with households only being allowed to send out 1 person to get food)?
The data on the linked page above shows that China has a Per Capita covid death rate of 10.8 per million, while that of France is 2,115.56 deaths per million. Even if you were to take the side of the tin-foil hat conspiracists and multiply China's covid death rate by a factor of 10, France would still have a covid death rate that's 20 times (20 TIMES!) that of China.
The only Western country with a lower covid death rate than China is New Zealand, which has an astonishingly low covid death rate of 0.2 deaths per million - solely because for much of the duration of the pandemic, NZ literally shut itself off from the world, and only opened up a few months ago.
The remaining countries with low covid related death rates are poor African & Asian countries - either due to a nonexistent medical infrastructure that does not permit them to keep accurate infection/hospitalization/death records or because the vast majority of poor countries have a significantly young population with relatively robust immune systems due to repeated exposure to illness causing pathogens.
The other wealthy/developed countries on that list that are nearest to China are the UAE & Qatar, both with 236 and 238 covid related deaths per million respectively, Japan with 250 covid deaths per million, and Singapore with 252 deaths per million.
Ah yes, China, comes to the top of the list when I think of protectors of human life. One-child policies, welding people into their apartment buildings, corralling them into COSTCOs [1] like they're farm animals being loaded into a semi-truck. Such benevolence.
> Or have a lot of us so internalized anti-China propaganda that we're no longer able to think logically?
Nah, more likely you have been drinking the pro-China propaganda like a 7-11 Big Gulp.
So between a country that implements extremely restrictive (some would say 'heartlessly' restrictive) policies in order to safeguard the lives of their vulnerable elderly population, and another country (the 'land of the free') which is so 'free' it allows 1 million+ of its citizens to die, and whose politicians have shown on multiple occasions that they care more about saving the country's economy than saving the lives of their citizens? Which would you say is a 'protector of Human life' as opposed to a 'protector of the economy'.
I would tell you to stop drinking the kool-aid, but it would be a waste of effort. Rational arguments won't work against emotion-driven beliefs and delusions
(China - Those Evil Communists.
'West' - Lands of the Free and Birthplace of Freedom and All that is Good).
It's not a fact, come on. Many countries that didn't choose to lock down their population did better. Actually, since vitamin D deficiency is a risk factor, it may have increased deaths and decreased the overall health of the population.
It's actually 50 million dead, not 5 million. And some experts even say, that possibly up to 200 million Chinese have died from covid so far. All those repeated lockdowns and city-wide mass tests are just being done for the 'lolz'.
P.S. I wore my tin-foil hat while posting the above. It's pretty similar to the one you're wearing.
That’s already happening and it was the more mild omicron strain causing the latest lockdowns and the resurgence.
Their lockdowns are politically motivated: saving face because they prematurely declared victory, and a need to avoid dependence on western vaccines due to the ineffectiveness of their own vaccines—the latter really just a roundabout way to save face.
If you understood Chinese culture, you’d know that saving face is pretty important and makes you do crazy things.
More likely it’s many people who are of the mindset that lockdowns did nothing/weren’t worth it, that’s prevalent in the US. If you think the activity is useless then it would look pretty bad given all the downsides of lockdowns
They've also saved themselves some of the long-term cost of long COVID, which is a fun mystery we've signed up for in the US. Also weren't they working with a less effective vaccine?
They haven't actually dealt with Covid yet. Their immunisation rates are low and the vaccines they've used are not the best. It's an ongoing process where they are still flattening the curve. They aren't back to normal.
I'm not sure that is true in general, but it is unfortunately true for the elderly in China - precisely the population they want to protect. They've sort of screwed themselves by not vaxxing the elderly at high rates.
Which raises an interesting question. In China they could make elderly get vaccinated. They close entire large apartment buildings with one person'a exposure to covid, bring them food occasionally and organize security and testing for those people. Why not go through and get everyone vaccinated? They are already monitoring their lives closely with Orwellian surveillance, why not just add on required shots on top of all that hell? I haven't seen that China disputes the usefulness of covid vaccines.
Could the same deaths have been prevented by deploying better policies? Remember that millions of people we forcibly locked in their homes. They faced food shortages. They have their lives ruined because they couldn’t make a living. All of this because the CCP wants zero Covid rather than a rational policy of limiting the most at risk to the disease and allowing the population to get natural immunity from getting sick.
Directly? No. By suicide and future complications due to having their life upended/destroyed yeah.
The CCP should have purchase novavax for the shot (they still should given China’s low jab rate) and allowed the majority of people to live their lives. Covid for the majority posses little risk.
Kinda hard to take this seriously when you’re using anti vaxxer slang(jab). If you didn’t mean it that way just giving you a heads up that it immediately clocked as an anti vaxx dog whistle.
May be cultural differences then. In the US and Canada the anti vaxxers will pejoratively refer to the vaccine as “the jab” or taking it as “getting the jab”
All sorts of people have called getting a vaccine "getting the jab" for decades. It isn't some secret code for "I don't believe that vaccines are safe"
Huh, looks like it might be my little bubble. Went looking online and definitely see media references to “the jab” late 2021 and then it appears the anti vaxx crowd I first experienced with took it on as a sarcastic mocking of how the media used a synonym instead of calling it the vaccine.
Yeah, I think jab has become accepted US shorthand for a shot and it's not pejorative. But your comment is shocking, you made a graceful acceptance that the word's definition had changed? Thank you.
Actually I live in Japan and Japan has implemented exactly 0 lockdowns. While policies have reduced the number of people walking about, there are still more people shoulder to shoulder on a daily basis than anywhere in the US.
If you are in the US, half the us thinks masks and taking care not to communicate deadly diseases to them in some evil attempt to control them. In my world, all my friends know it's real and masks help protect you, but they are just so tired of it. I'm tired of it, but I still wear one, don't eat at inside restaurants, etc. But most people stopped thinking of covid as that disease that can really hurt you, if you are unlucky enough. Half the time I'm tempted not to wear a mask - my wife gets frustrated at me, but I do wear one when out at the store etc.
Nitpick, but AFAIK China hasn't violated Taiwan's airspace. Taiwan says they'd treat it as an act of war if they did.
Taiwan has an Air Defense Identification Zone where they track aircraft and aircraft entering it are supposed to identify themselves. This extends over the Chinese mainland and it's this zone that everyone talks about China "violating". But it's Chinese airspace and ultimately they have the right to fly there without notifying Taiwan.
Well, only 13 countries recognize Taiwan as a sovereign country - such as the 10,000 people of the 21 square kilometer island Naura.
Also, Taiwan occupies Kinmen Island in the bay of Xiamen's harbor on the PRC mainland. The island is in the Xiamen harbor and is 10 km from the city of Xiamen. So any PRC planes flying around Xiamen are "violating Taiwan's sovereign airspace" (which almost no one recognizes as "sovereign" - one of the main parties on Taiwan acknowledges Taiwan and the mainland are all one country).
It's complicated. Even Taiwan doesn't recognize Taiwan (Republic of China) as a sovereign nation, separate and distinct from the Peoples Republic of China. There are Taiwanese political groups that do want that but they haven't gotten their way so far.
Either way, you probably meant that 13 nations have full and formal diplomatic relationships with Taiwan. Which, btw does not include the US, Japan or any EU nations.
It's not really that complicated.
After WW2 the Communists drove the Republic of China govt out of mainland China. So mainland China is controlled by the communists and Taiwan by the remnants of the Republic of China government. Republic of China government still claims to be the rightful government of all of China (Taiwan included), same with the Communist government.
And the people of Taiwan don't want to communist Chinese mainland govt to come and kill all their leaders, imprison people and take away their freedom, like the folks in officially happy Hong Kong. Adding on to your comment, it's pretty obvious why anyone would want to stay out of China's control.
Chinese law should almost never be considered something that constrains the government, and especially not in grandiose cases like this. The government will do as it pleases, regardless of the law. That is more of a strong press release than a binding proposition.
However, I am not arguing that China is not serious about retaking Taiwan. They are deathly serious.
Following the ROC government's retreat to Taiwan on 7 December 1949, the Temporary Provisions together with martial law made the country an authoritarian one-party state despite the constitution. Democratization began in the 1980s. Martial law was lifted in 1987, and in 1991 the Temporary Provisions were repealed.
ROC has been democratic since the 01990s, but it was an authoritarian dictatorship that killed millions of its own people at the time the Communists drove it out of the mainland (only to exceed its atrocities with their own) and for decades afterwards.
Even dishonest histories of the KMT are rarely so dishonest as to claim the ROC was democratically governed before 01949, however much they try to whitewash the mass killings. Disinformation has to be plausible to be effective.
All this arguing about what the KMT did and the relationship going back to the ROC doesn't matter. Today Taiwan is a democracy, is no threat to anyone, and deserves every right of self-determination. Democracies should work together to collectively protect each other from the authoritarian countries that want to take them over and destroy their democracies.
"going back to the ROC"? It sounds like you aren't aware that the ROC still exists; it governs Taiwan. Some of the things you say are true but it seems clear that this is purely by coincidence, not a result of any knowledge you might have of the topic.
Whether they can or not is highly questionable. "Few will really care" is certainly false.
And in terms of nation states caring, that's also incorrect because Taiwan is a linchpin of US Pacific foreign policy and for the US to do nothing or "not care" about Taiwan being invaded would signal to allies in the region that they cannot count on the United States and that they should find their own defense arrangements. It would de facto kick the US out of the Pacific and end global hegemony overnight.
Frankly, Taiwan is a big fucking deal w.r.t US, Japanese, and Australian national defense concerns and is a big deal to other nations such as New Zealand.
Is that true either? I'm not sure. We'd have to look at various polling results to start with and then go from there. I know in my previous suburban neighborhood and even moreso in my urban neighborhood that there are Ukrainian flags hung outside of doors and windows. I've never seen that before or anything like it.
They can't, not even remotely close any time in the next 20 years at least. Can you imagine what a landing beach would look like being pounded by drone spotted artillery? See war in Ukraine. Forget the approach, anti ship missiles, mines, sheer volume of logistics needed. Stepping on the landing beach is a suicide without absolutely astronomical advantage in air power and ability to suffer huge attrition, even then.. 155mm hidden under camo/thermal nets, DJI drone rigged with magazines of small bombs.. Kyiv, Kharkiv, Kherson Childs play, this would make Diep and Galipoli look like walk in the park.
I would go as far as to say that US Army + Marines + Navy could not land on Taiwan without suffering multiple brigades of attrition AFTER at least a year long blockade and air campaign. It is that hard.
PRC has to surpass US in GDP, then spend 10-20 years of US level military spending, then maybe.
That simple sentence is doing a lot of heavy dodging to ignore all of the points brought up in the post upthread about the inherent difficulties involved in naval landings.
Now, if you're going to say economic pressures will lead to political settlements without conflict, then that's a discussion to be had.
Putin called he needs your brilliant strategic advice. 1 week to Kyiv or was it 2 days? I can't recall. This kind nationalistic PRC BS is how they will start a war, get defeated than have another civil war with 100 million dead.
The US isn't going to be caught off guard by China. What the west has been doing for Ukraine in the last few months in terms of weapons, the US and other countries have been doing for Taiwan over the last few decades:
The latest sale involves adding 60 Harpoon anti-ship missiles to the pile of hundreds they already have.
China will not have an easy time of invading such a well-armed country, and they also have to weigh the non-zero possibility of foreign intervention. It will be a costly endeavor by any measure.
China's best bet is a cultural/political/economic takeover, which will give other countries time to diversify chip manufacturing, as we are currently doing.
Taiwan imports 60-70% of it's food and they can't increase domestic production because they import fertilizer and they can't make their own fertilizer because they import natural gas, and they don't have any domestic gas fields.
China doesn't need to storm the beaches, they can passively blockade Taiwan until they give in.
Taiwan has hundreds of anti ship misiles with a range of over 100km.
China doesn’t have to storm beaches to be within shooting range.
If Taiwan were an easy conquest it would have been conquered. It’s not impossible that China would attempt some sort of belligerence, but Taiwan is capable responding to any threat with enough firepower to deter such actions.
Many mainland Chinese think the best approach for China-Taiwan issue is to just wait. It's not of the best interest of Chinese people (of both China and Taiwan) to change the status quo.
On the other side, the US obviously wants to see a war between the two side of the strait. And the US is actually prepareing for it.
China will invade Taiwan when the cost to do so is low enough and/or they are desperate. In other words, the probability of success is considerably higher today than it will be in the future (even if the probability of success today isn't great).
Russia is a declining state relative to Ukraine & Europe, so Putin's odds of success in 2022 were considerably higher than they would be 10 years later. So if invading Ukraine was necessary at some point, 2022 was the best time to do it.
China's regime believes that invading Taiwan is necessary, but OTOH the Chinese military is getting stronger very quickly and they believe they'll be in a much better position to invade in a decade then they are now. So there is no way they're going to invade any time soon.
Avoiding a war completely is highly unlikely given Xi & China's policies. But delaying a war is highly likely. And a war indefinitely delayed is a war avoided.
> And a war indefinitely delayed is a war avoided.
You spend the rest of the comment before this talking about how war will happen when they are stronger and probably can't be avoided, so I don't know how this last sentence follows.
If you know for sure that someone will wage war on you in future, and that they will get stronger faster than you will, then it could be in your interest to go to war against them sooner rather than later.
Likewise, treating everyone you disagree with as completely insane; devoid of any reasonable motivations is a lazy hand-wavy viewpoint. It’ll also make you prone to suck up any and all propaganda that aligns with your biases.
If by "internationally" you mean Western countries: Xi Jinping doing dumb things to save his "face" is very detrimental to his reputation there.
No one outside of China thinks his stubborn refusal to abandon the failed Zero Covid policy is in any way a good idea. Everyone sees it as a stupid and irrational face-saving action.
Is he? I feel like everyone said this about Putin and now the narrative has changed and he's an unstable madman whose going to launch a nuke if he loses too badly in his war.
Like many politicians, Xi is ruthlessly self-interested. His actions that allow him to consolidate power aren't necessarily in the best interests of China.
> now the narrative has changed and he's an unstable madman whose going to launch a nuke if he loses too badly in his war.
Yes, this sort of narrative plays a lot better when describing someone you're actively at war with. Along with the fact that you are always winning the war. Ukraine has been winning the war with Russia for about 9 months now, according to the media.
"Ukraine has been winning the war with Russia for about 9 months now, according to the media."
What media?
In the beginning most reporting was that it would be over in a week. Then Russia had that little blunder with their first offensive. Then again most reporting was that the russian artillery steamroller would squash the Ukrainians. Now most media favor the Ukrainians due to their recent successes. Also goals and frames of reference changed. In the beginning winning for Ukraine was not letting Russia roflstomping them. Now it is throwing all russian military out of their country.
Consolidating power isn’t inherently against the interests of China. And as poster above explained, Putin is acting rationally. In fact, war is probably one of the most rational and pervasive actions throughout history. Probably every country has gone to war and it’s not always because some madman went berserk.
It’s always in our interest to simply reduce our enemy to madmen or nazis, as it justifies our own counter aggression.
Yeah, Biden himself recently said that Putin is a rational actor who grossly miscalculated, because he was basically fed very bad and flawed intel. He may be blustering about nukes now, but the only way he would do that is if Ukraine turns the tables and invades Russia, or something similar.
"Rational" has somehow become synonymous with "good" or "agrees with me" - rationality doesn't have anything to do with those, it just means "not insane".
And tyrants can be exceedingly rational; they just have their own goals that they're working towards, not the goals of some theoretical "perfect democracy".
> Would a rational actor enslave an entire ethnic minority in work camps, allow harvesting of organs, crush their financial world hub (Hong Kong), and so on?
There is nothing irrational about the first two! Crushing HK is a rational necessity if there is a danger of such disobedience spreading to other regions.
Xi is not rational. His isolationist policies and "return to Mao-style communism" have killed China's economy. The current zero-COVID policy is the icing on the cake: It runs completely counter to scientific thought and is impossible to achieve for 1.2 billion people. He's painted himself into a corner and is unwilling to budge (how can the Premier be wrong?), and is doing tremendous damage to China in the process.
Very little of your comment is true. I attribute increasing vitriol and false statements being thrown around as a symptom of our increasingly escalating cold war with China.
It is interesting to see how dramatically opinion has cooled on China in the past few years, simply because they have become a great power competitor.
Please be specific about which of the comments were wrong. The covid shutdowns have clearly significantly impacted China's economy. There's no doubt. They failed to aggressively inoculate their country, which is under their control. Other countries had low covid deaths, China is not the only one. Poor choices, irrationally sticking with that policy is not a great sign.
> Xi['s] ... isolationist policies ... have killed China's economy.
The PRC's GDP was US$17.7 trillion nominal in 02021, the latest year for which we have numbers, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_China. That makes it the world's second largest economy by nominal dollar value (after the US) and the largest by PPP. That's not just individual countries, either; it overtook the economy of the EU in nominal GDP in 02021 under Xi's leadership. The IMF's estimate for 02022 is US$20 trillion according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi....
This isn't just a matter of domestic numbers that can be fudged, either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_exports says it exported US$3 trillion worth of goods in 02021, up from US$2.5 billion in 02020, making it the world's #1 exporter, with almost twice the exports of the US at #2, though by this measure the entire EU does still exceed PRC. (The EU is excluded from the list for not being a country.)
Nor is it just a question of adding together poverty-level earnings of 1.2 billion people. The PRC's per-capita GDP is US$20k PPP. Economically, the average Chinese person is doing fine, although they're experiencing a lot of unfortunate things outside the economic sphere.
China's economy is experiencing major difficulties (Evergrande, zero-COVID lockdowns) but it is far from being "killed" or a "return to Mao-style communism", by which I charitably assume you mean 01970s-style stagnation and not, for example, the largest famine in human history.
You should take a long hard look at where you're getting your information from and how you decide what information is trustworthy.
The games played with currency and private debt that fueled the massive export boom are not sustainable indefinitely. There are already signs it may be tipping, and the world raising interest rates to combat inflation will worsen the situation. Combine that with their exports to the US falling due to sanctions and a new interest in US manufacturing. And as their population and the population of their other trading partners all shrink...
They are still growing, they are still getting stronger, but for how long? Meanwhile 70% of Taiwanese residents now identify as Taiwanese rather than Chinese?
If they wait for that percentage to climb, and for TSMC to diversify fabs to other places? The cost to take Taiwan is going up, and the prize for taking it is falling with no reason to expect inflections in either. If they don't take it now, there is really no point taking it at all.
Rationally speaking, there probably already isn't any point in taking it. It would tank exports and speed the adoption of local manufacturing elsewhere. All to get a temporary stranglehold on chip supply? What would they do with those chips? They are already far too export dominated. They need consumers to reduce their exports. If they want to win the long game, let their 1% give half their wealth to educating knowledge workers to buy their manufacturing rather than exporting it.
I think people overrate TSMC are the primary motivator for the PRC, who have basically maintained the same posture toward the 'renegade province' since 1949. This is unfinished business from a civil war which never officially ended.
for sure, but most opinion from the west inflates TSMC as primary motivator, its a complicating factor yes, but the PRC has been on about taking Taiwan for the past 70 years, before semi-conductors were even invented.
look at the top voted comment in this thread - the narrative is some sort of escalation from Xi Jinping when unification with Taiwan is boilerplate rhetoric which every leader since Deng says at Party Congress.
PRC position has not changed - commitment to unification by peaceful means, but war never off the table.
Agreed! I think there was maybe some real escalation around the time of Pelosi's visit (where Morris Chang was in attendance in her photo-op with Tsai), though, and it's hard not to see the moves in HK as threatening.
Chang is the leader Taiwan really needs, unfortunately he is unable to moderate Tsai. TSMC will eventually be a loser in the story that is currently being written
Yeah, I can't imagine he was happy with TSMC having to cancel all its sales to Huawei. But that wasn't really Tsai's fault; nobody is able to moderate the US, and the sanctions weren't a Taiwanese policy. I was thinking reunification was really the only path to saving TSMC, but if Chang agreed, he probably would've declined the invitation to the photo op; and obviously he knows more than I do about the issues.
Instead he says reunification would destroy TSMC because of how dependent it is on overseas suppliers.
Tsai is not entirely a creature of the US, and has indirectly - perhaps initially, inadvertently - manipulated the US by pushing for an unendorsed independence, forcing the US to deal with a situation they hadn't before considered - a 'two china' outcome.
However, now that US does sees this outcome, it cannot unsee it and is thus driving hard to secure that outcome, no doubt as a stepping stone for the long term goal of regime change in PRC
As for Chang, I think status quo is his ideal outcome - de facto independence, TSMC servicing two of the biggest economies in the world, and therefore, the entire world. Not happening now though, sadly
That was an interesting idea about TSMC's influence. But the fact that there should be two separate Chinas has only become more clear each year to me, with Taiwan's increasingly democratic and successful democracy (and China's every more authoritarian and dangerous behavior). I've thought that for 30 years should be the policy, and I'm just an average US person.
Apparently you don't know what the ROC is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33256578 so maybe your opinion on this topic shouldn't count; you're just repeating things you've heard that you don't understand.
The pointless nuanced arguments about Taiwan claiming to still be the real China and mainland China also claiming the same and the US saying officially we see there will be one China seem pointless to me - I'm sure some people care. The reality of the ground and the likely future attack from China to Taiwan is what I care more about. Please don't tell me what to do.
I didn't tell you what to do, I just dismissed your opinions as amazingly uninformed. Whether you want to keep spouting amazingly uninformed opinions is up to you.
I agree with many of these points. The future is unpredictable, whoever is on top today will not be on top forever, and the idea of being governed by the PRC is very unpopular in Taiwan. And nothing you have said supports our more ignorant interlocutor's point that Xi's policies have "killed China's economy".
Still, other points I disagree with.
PRC's exports to the US are not falling; they fell in 02019 due to sanctions and in 02020 due to covid, but they're already back above their 02018 level, which was the highest in history. See
https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html. They probably will not fall within the next decade or two.
If US manufacturing becomes stronger, that will increase PRC exports to the US, not decrease them. (If the US doesn't have anything to trade for Chinese products, it will not get them, which may cause them to be sold to different customers or may cause their production to be reduced.)
I think increased interest rates abroad would tend to increase PRC's exports, not decrease them. As far as I know, PRC isn't borrowing money from abroad to finance expansion of production capacity; it's lending money abroad to finance consumption of its exports.
PRC's population is not shrinking, though it's barely growing and may start shrinking soon. Most of their trading partners have growing populations.
TSMC cannot be taken, even today; it can only be destroyed. Today, doing that would be counterproductive to PRC because so much of their domestic industry depends on TSMC, but the US has forced TSMC to impose sanctions on PRC's military. This is an existential threat to the PRC. If the sanctions continue, or are removed but could plausibly be reimposed, and TSMC remains strategically important, at some point PRC leadership will act to remove the military advantage this gives the US and its satellites over them, even if that means paving Taiwan with Trinitite. The alternative is to be unable to respond to military attacks from the US.
Reducing exports only improves your economy if the exports are stolen, for example in the Congo Free State or the Irish Potato Famine. Weaker forms of this are known as "Dutch disease" or "the resource curse". This is very much not the case in PRC. Historically, export-led industrialization has been by far the most important cause of economic growth. By contrast, your prescription of import-substitution industrialization has failed everywhere it was tried, including, for decades, in PRC.
Increased exports leads to increased specialization and increased capitalization, which increase productivity. Unless, again, we're talking about enslaved laborers who are not in a position to capture any value from their increased productivity, this increased productivity leads to increased earnings, which increases domestic consumption. This has been known for centuries and is agreed on by virtually all economists.
Your implications that Chinese people do not value education, and that lack of education causes low consumption in China, could hardly be more false. Chinese culture has prized education highly for thousands of years. It's one of the key distinguishing features of Chinese culture. Expensive private tutoring companies were a hot startup sector until the government crackdown.
> Great silicon part, and quite timely as we were forced by HQ last Friday to revise all product line designs to comply with 100% Chinese domestic semiconductors & passive components by latest Q4 end. All western sourced/accounts and parts are now forbidden, apart from those sourced by HQ’s registered jurisdiction.
> Worth adding to the list, we’ve also signed accounts with GigaDevice and Expressif Shanghai in the MCU and connectivity range. Thanks for the info, we’ll get in touch with WCH and have a few shipped over for bench tests.
Although another commenter claims GigaDevice and Espressif have all their parts made by TSMC?
> Expensive private tutoring companies were a hot startup sector until the government crackdown.
This is almost entirely due to the Gaokao. Also, there's a difference between prizing education as a means to make money, and prizing education as a means to make a well-rounded person. The concept of a 'liberal arts' education in China barely exists, from the standpoint that education isn't about vocational skills to enrich yourself monetarily, but to enrich oneself as a person.
Fundamentally, I don't think an authoritarian state that constricts intellectual, academic, and political freedom, combined with an educational system that acts largely as a vocational gatekeeper, is conducive to the free questioning that is at the heart of innovation.
Western education tends to teach rebellion. Rebellion against your parents, against the government, against the status quo. The way you get a Steve Jobs or an Elon Musk is to have someone, who is told no over and over again, "you can't do this", to say "f*ck it, I'm doing it anyway, no matter how stupid or impossible you say it is."
It's this rebellion that's at the heart of innovation. And I don't think Confucian or CCP values rebellion very much.
galangalalgol's assertion, as I read it, was that China was domestically consuming only 81% of its production because the populace was insufficiently educated because not enough money was being spent on education, and maybe that the cause of this was economic inequality.
Are you supporting that assertion, or are you making an unrelated point about educational models? Because the connection isn't clear to me.
To the question of vocational training vs. liberal arts education, I think you're exaggerating subtle differences in cultural attitudes toward education that really do exist. Schools in China have compulsory classes in physics, chemistry, biology, geography, and history, among other things — vocational training for a few percent of the population, but liberal arts for the rest. The most respected form of education is still calligraphy.
And, despite paying lip service to free questioning and rebellion, Western schooling consists almost entirely of intensive training in obedience and conformism: https://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html
Steve Jobs wasn't the product of the Western education system; he was the product of LSD, his machinist father, a neighborhood full of engineers, working at Hewlett Packard at 13, Hare Krishna prasad, Zen Buddhism, a pilgrimage to India, Transcendental Meditation, and Primal Scream Therapy, but especially LSD. Elon Musk isn't the product of the Western education system; he's the product of his emerald-tycoon engineer father, his supermodel mother who spent her childhood seeking the Lost City of the Kalahari, and his Commodore VIC-20.
Maybe if they'd been schooled in China they would have had the independence conditioned out of them, I suppose. But I think that's more a matter of the surrounding society than the school system.
> Are you supporting that assertion, or are you making an unrelated point about educational models? Because the connection isn't clear to me.
I'm just reacting to the point about tutoring as a proxy for valuing education, when in my experience (living in China, and with my extended Chinese family), this mostly results from pressure over the Gaokao. In the US, college admissions aren't so test focused, indeed, a lot of colleges don't even require the SAT/ACT or AP scores for application.
> And, despite paying lip service to free questioning and rebellion, Western schooling consists almost entirely of intensive training in obedience and conformism
Yes, K-12 is mostly about indoctrinating kids into the requirements of society. Nevertheless, Western kids rebel against their parents and school, and media even celebrates this rebellion. Moreover, a growing number of parents commit to alternative K-12 schooling. I sent my kids to Montessori schools when it was possible.
> But I think that's more a matter of the surrounding society than the school system
The school system is a reflection of the surrounding society. If we were analyzing a country where most of the schools were religious schools that drilled a religious book, we'd obviously view the structure of the school as based on the values of the society. To the extent that K-12 education strips kids of their individualities and passions and independence, as it happens in both the US and China, the degree of harshness is substantially more in Asia in general. US school kids come home and after homework (if they do it), tend to play. Asia is renown for kids finishing school, then beginning after-school education, tutors, etc some of them study from 13-16 hrs/day in junior year.
My son is a senior in HS, his first class is 9am, he gets home at 3:30. He has 1hr lunch, and 1hr during the school day of advisory/study hall (tutoring). 2hrs of homework a day max. So about 8-9 hrs of study total. His peer in Shanghai is doing almost double that.
But I do think Chinese culture has greatly valued education (and standardized testing) for about 20 times as long as the gaokao has existed; in that sense, too, the school system is a reflection of the surrounding society, not only vice versa. It's true that the "education" in question has often been more a matter of convincingly repeating established doctrines than of repudiating them, and often valued because it was a gateway to material gain, by way of standardized testing.
On the other hand, I never see the kind of anti-intellectualism that got Trump elected in the US (and Hitler in Germany) in the families of my Chinese friends. I know it can exist in Chinese culture — the Cultural Revolution had plenty of it — but it doesn't seem to be a dominant thread the way it is in the US. And this is true of families from Taiwan, too; it's not just a Mainland Chinese reaction to the CR. They just don't seem to have the nerd/egghead stereotype.
(And I still don't understand why that other person thinks Chinese people don't spend enough on schooling or why they would consume more if they did.)
I definitely agree with you that the US has a really bizarre kind of anti-intellectualism going on, and the GOP is kind of leveraging it, because much of their voting base is rural and old and less educated, and so they're basically putting out this divisive message that educated people are these "other" folks, and 'real americans' are the less educated people. Sarah Palin literally said it directly in a speech. One GOP Senator called an opponent who had multiple college degrees "a snob" .
In general, I think this 'rebel' instinct can go either way. It can lead you to challenge the status quo and make an improvement, it can also lead you to think you're a rebel because you deny the moon landing, or you're a flat earther, or an anti-vaxer. Anti-establishmentarianism can turn from a legitimate gripe into a conspiracy rathole really quickly.
From "I don't wanna wear a mask or get vaxed" to "vaccines are implanting you with Bill Gates microchips!"
It's kinda weird how Americans would look down on a very qualified political candidate with lots of degrees, but then boost up a blithering idiot because "he's one of us". No where else is that attitude prevalent. When you are flying commercial airlines, do you want the unqualified, uneducated guy flying the plane? When you're getting heart surgery, do you want the guy who never went to med school doing your surgery? But somehow, when it comes to politics, the guy who studied economics, history, political science, engineering, somehow loses points.
Five digit years are annoying difficult to parse. Adding leading zeros is redundant and wrong. Once you move away from the treating the non-zero leading digits as significant it raise awkward questions like: why five digits instead of six?
> can't be caught off guard by China as EU was caught off guard by Russia.
There's always a bigger fish.
The last time nations were obsessed with autarky, we got WW1, and soon after, WW2.
Most countries (i.e. every country not suffering from a drastic case of the resource curse) have the nature that if they trade a lot with another country, either country would lose economic value if they invade the other, _even if_ that invasion goes off stellarly well with almost no losses: The populace doesn't like being subjugated and produces significantly less.
In an inbalanced trade/dependency relationship, such as Saudi Arabia's oil vs. the rest of the world, or Russia's gas vs. europe, it's actually _both_ sides that are dependent on the other. It's the dutch curse all over again.
Go back in time:
* Europe wants more gas to grow its economy, and doesn't have enough on its own soil.
* Russia has more than plenty and is willing to sell it.
* We enter a period of years where europe companies and countries more and more build industry that isn't going to work out without the relatively cheap russian gas. As these industries continue to succeed and russia continues to be a reliable supplier, ever more industry takes the leap and becomes dependent on it.
* This sounds like handing off quite the 'weapon' to your supplier, but, the problem is, that supplier is now just as dependent on this relationship as the consumer is: Russian economy falls apart without the trade of europe-produced goods (a lot of it by industries that run on russian gas), just as fast as europe falls apart without russian gas.
Thus, if russia were to invade europe, russia's economic value falls off a cliff, and the same applies to a lesser extent to europe. The only reason europe could in theory invade russia (assumes a perfect invasion, no nukes, no significant resistance at all, just a dejected populace), is because russia's primary value is not particularly dependent on human capital.
My theory about why this theory didn't work out and russia invades ukraine is a mix of:
* Misunderstanding by Russia of world/Europe response to this invasion.
* Too much power in one person, who, like most people surrounded by yay-sayers for 20 years, has lost grip on reality.
* Most of all, a ticking clock: Europe has stated they want to wean themselves off of fossil fuel within a decade or so. And so they should, but it's a torpedo to the trade dependency relationship between europe and russia.
That last one is the economic argument: Russia had to do something or their economy would fall apart if europe delivers on their plans to rapidly reduce their dependence on (russian-supplied) gas.
Thus, autarky -> war. Because if you're doing economically better than your neighbouring country, you produce more weapons and more people, and just invade em, why not.
We can trade the risk of what happened to europe, or what is likely to happen if china and the west become autarkic relative to each other (namely, that china invades taiwan) - with nukes and MAD. But that's got its own problems.
> The last time nations were obsessed with autarky, we got WW1
Were they? I thought WWI happened in the midst of first huge wave of globalization - to the point that no one thought war was possible, as it would mean collapse of international trade, and huge losses that come with it.
Many thought it was not only possible but inevitable: The Schlieffen plan, French revanchism, general military buildup across Europe, and of course Biskmark's 1888 comment:
"One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans."
You're both wrong. Many people subscribed to each belief.
The economists, globalists and industry people believed that it could never happen. The military, nationalist and political folks figured it would be inevitable, or at very least if it happened they had to win.
Many people subscribed to the argument of the economists and globalists in more democratic countries because it was a comforting illusion the people in the more militaristic autocracies, believed it was inevitable, and incidentally were the nations that hold the most culpability for WW1, Germany, Russia, Austro-Hungarian empire.
Wait a minute why is all of my description starting to sound terribly and horribly familiar to what is going on now?
Seriously those that will continue to posist that war will not come are foolish and don't realizing that the first steps are already in progress with the information war being waged right now through cyberspace.
Note I don't want a war to happen and think it will be horrible and terrible, but all the elements are in place for it to happen. A shifting balance of power into a multipolar world, multiple nations either facing decline or ascendancy, realpolitik becoming the norm in international relations, it all looks very grim unless some very wise, peace loving and capable leaders emerge on the world stage soon.
Or, like the UK, the days of Russian empire are over and the new bi-polar world will be the NATO/India/AUNZ/Asia vs China/Africa.
So another Cold War for the 21st Century if we continue to rely on a mercantilist attitude in a world where networking is more important than some trade links.
No the cold war required a bipolar world for it's stability with MAD being the keystone that held the arch together. That was the only way for it to be stable and why we didn't have a massive war, with all actions being confined to small proxy wars.
We are in a multi-polar world now, Trump pointed out and many people are starting to agree, about whether or not the US really should be so closely aligned with Europe, NATO will probably stick around but it might not be enough. Meanwhile India has happily agreed to buy all the Russian oil that Europe isn't, which is done to spit in the face of the sanctions imposed on Russia. The mutli-polar world right now is US, India, China, EU, and Russia which is still a regional power, each of which have different interests.
The problem is China and the EU are facing huge demographic shortfalls in the next 30 years that will pose existential threats to their society, Russia is in the same boat. The EU is having this problem addressed to a certain extent through immigration but the nationalistic racist attitudes of the Chinese people make this a less palatable option for them. It is likely that the demographic cliff is going to continue to stress Chinese society to the breaking point until it snaps and begins an international incident that could quickly escalate to a global war. The best thing the US could do to preserve it's interests is do whatever we need to to schmooze up to India and cement an alliance with them, as they represent the best regional challenger to China and if they end up on the side of the CCP will cause huge problems as at that point a Bejing-Delhi alliance will be able to exert control over 1/3 > of the world's population. (This assumes they will be able to control all of Southeast Asia through soft and hard power)
it seems that only our instutions, or big chunks of the whole global trade system, want this war; but this this point, a lot of those systems are automated by rules and regulations and a overly complicated network that become inentelligible to the people 'running' it.
nobody that is alive and sentient (in the traditional sense) wants a war... and yet, we all see it looming.
Sounds a lot like how the assassination of the heir appearant of the Austro-Hungarian Empire led to the UK declaring war on Germany for marching through Belgium.
No one wanted the war, many knew it would be horrible, and yet it led to the most nightmarish collective human experience in human history.
>Europe has stated they want to wean themselves off of fossil fuel within a decade or so.
And to think that in the 80s Regan tried (but opposed by business) to impose sanctions on europe because of the USSR gas pipelines. What a circus. Europe got hooked on USSR gas in less than 20 years, and has been planning to wean off for 10.
Europe after WW2 relied on the US to defend against Russian aggression, and not even 30 years later, in a master class of cleverness played both sides by buying, and then becoming dependent, on Russian gas, only for the Russians to become aggressive again.
Where the cleverness falls apart is that cheap Russian gas was on bought time, and now all the europeans have to show for it is massive debt, expensive social programs, a lack-luster military and closed nuclear plants. Good job...
It’s less that Europe is using more Russian gas than they had insufficient infrastructure to get alternatives to Russian natural gas.
Ukraine was invaded because they have a great deal of oil and natural gas and could therefore significantly impact the Russian economy especially if the world starts to reduce Fossil fuel use.
> Russia had to do something or their economy would fall apart
Ukraine would solve nothing in the Russian economy.
Ukraine would simply secure two things: Crimea (which is essential to Russia and was strategically exposed), and complete control on all main gas infrastructure towards Europe. It's not a coincidence that the invasion was launched when it became clear that the new gasduct to the North was dead in the water (because of American opposition to it): Putin wanted to make gas furniture to Europe strategically independent from other countries (i.e. completely dependent on Russia), one way or the other. The original calculation was probably "You don't give me Nordstream, so I'll take everything else". Obviously it didn't go as planned.
If I created the impression that this invasion was a smart thing, I didn't intend to do that. It's more: Russia is up the creek without a paddle and wanted to do something, on the bizarre but common logic of 'well, doing _something_ is better than _nothing_". Or similarly atrociously reasoned bullpuckey such as 'we have to have a bufferstate because otherwise NATO will attack us. Us, being a state with ICBMs".
"That last one is the economic argument: Russia had to do something or their economy would fall apart if europe delivers on their plans to rapidly reduce their dependence on (russian-supplied) gas."
Putin didn't have to invade! If he was truly worried about Russia's economy he could have (and should have) gone about instituting reforms/policies to encourage economic diversification and growth. I fail to see how even a successful invasion of Ukraine results in economic upside for Russia. They were doomed to fight an insurgency for years which costs money, or they're going to spend resources rebuilding a country they just fought a war in.
> Putin didn't have to invade! If he was truly worried about Russia's economy he could have (and should have) gone about instituting reforms/policies to encourage economic diversification and growth.
Yes, absolutely. Russia, 60m people (or how much is it? More even) notwithstanding, is essentially a petrostate. It was too hard to try to get the population-driven productive elements to compete against the easy resource money.
I mean, Norway is right fucking there. This war is on them, entirely, for failing to prepare for the inevitable day when the natural resources are no longer enough to bankroll the entire state.
But, doing it _now_ is not possible without major political upset, so the major political players, not wanting to be 'upset' out of a window (hey, you live by the sword, you die by the sword, I'm sure the political elite is aware of the usual way to deal with higher ups that need to be lesser higher up: By taking that literally) - start a war.
I don't get the feeling that the majority of the Russian Elite wanted this war. They only started getting suicided after the war started and they criticized Putin. Sure the ex-military, arm-chair warriors and nationalist delusionists wanted this war, but that's a small minority. America has it's share of crazy vocal "bomb, bomb, bomb" folks too - see John Bolton, John McCain, Lindsay Graham, Pompeo etc....
Outside of Putin's delusions of grandeur for an empire that never existed I still fail to see ANY upside for Russia for this war.
that would be equivalent to shooting themselves in the ocean.
for now, they are still under the thumb of the american navy. how else would they ship out all the consumer goods? and to whom? USA is their biggest buyer.
If the US only put a partial blockade for Chinese bound ships in the Strait of Malacca, that would be enough. China is starved for oil too. They're trying to mitigate the Strait issue with the oil pipelines through Xinjiang and into the Caspian, but those are years away still.
Yes, the warning signs were there, but the EU was merrily speeding past them, finding reasons to argue against all of the warning signs. NS2 is one of the most emblematic signs of this: it was clearly going to tie Germany's energy needs closer to an already-proven-unreliable partner (Russia), increase the ability of Russia to use gas transit as politics, countries like Poland and the US were screaming at the top of their lungs "THIS IS A BAD IDEA" and until February 2022, Germany was responding "it'll be fine, nothing bad will come of this."
So I think it's fair to say that the EU was caught off guard by Russia, even if because of the EU's willful ignorance of affairs rather than Russian duplicity.
Russia has switched off the gas before, such as when Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014.
Hell, there's a Wikipedia page listing all of the Russia-Ukraine gas disputes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia%E2%80%93Ukraine_gas_dis...). One of the stated motivations for Nord Stream 2 was to improve reliability of gas to Europe in case Russia decided to cut off the gas because of a spat with one of the transit countries.
>>>Russia has switched off the gas before, such as when Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014.
Russia switched off the gas 7 years after Putin was screaming from the rooftops that the US sticking ABMs in Eastern Europe was a red line for Russia. That's Russia being an unreliable partner?
It really seems that much of the EU thought Putin was bluffing right up until the end of February. EU leaders proudly saying they had personal assurances Russia wouldn't invade again. There was incredible amounts of inaction. Only a handful of countries were shipping weapons, mostly non-EU.
Of course it is in the US strategic interests, the problem is having strategic interests doesn't automatically give the US rights to intervene. Contrary to Ukraine (plain violation of the territorial integrity of a sovereign nation) the situation in Taiwan is complicated (for those who doubt it please at least make the effort to read the Wikipedia entry). Now given recent history I don't doubt the US will not let it slip when their strategic interests are at risk, but at least be lucid. Edit: To clear doubts I should add I would obviously prefer Taiwan stay an independent free democratic country. I'm only tempering the argument I sometimes see (maybe wrongly here) "it's in our best interests" = "it's the right thing".
Taiwan as a piece of land has much more strategic importance than Ukraine. Ukraine's grain and terrain are the two things that are important about it from a utilitarian sense.
> Ukraine as a piece of land was Russia's only warmwater port.
Why is this obviously incorrect statement that can be easily disproved by just checking the map is being repeated again and again on HN? It is only second in popularity to "Russia invaded Ukraine to prevent NATO on its borders" which can also be trivially disproved by finding Estonia or Latvia on the map...
>>>It is only second in popularity to "Russia invaded Ukraine to prevent NATO on its borders" which can also be trivially disproved by finding Estonia or Latvia on the map...
While technically true, there is a big difference between the Estonian/Latvian border, and the Ukrainian one. I discussed this 7 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30513745
> Can you list the other warm-water ports used by the Russian Navy?
OP didn't say anything about Russian Navy specifically. However, do you suggest that Russian Navy couldn't use Novorossiysk for military purpose if need be?
> While technically true, there is a big difference between the Estonian/Latvian border, and the Ukrainian one. I discussed this 7 months ago
Well, Russia is now getting additional 1,340 km border with a new NATO member (real, not imaginary one like Ukraine) and is apparently completely unfazed by it. In fact they continue to move military from that border into Ukraine. Really makes you think whether they were really worried about spooky-scary NATO or pursuing some other goal in Ukraine all along...
Regarding other analysis from your comment - this is not WW2, nobody is tank-rushing capital of nuclear superpower via highways lol.
EDIT:
Also, I've re-read comment you referenced again and for a person with a lot of "defense consultant"-related buzzwords in profile you seem to be awfully poorly informed about European history. "Keep in mind this is a country who's arguably most important holiday commemorates the war where they lost 25+ million lives fighting off an invasion from a hostile alliance on their western border." is either intentional manipulation or pure ignorance because USSR _were_ part of the alliance and were happy to divide Poland and massacre its people at the beginning of WW2. They like literally started the whole thing themselves, but miscalculated with choosing their allies!
>>>OP didn't say anything about Russian Navy specifically.
To discuss options for Russia's future without the specific context of its national security interests is meaningless when the country's decision-makers are almost entirely from said national security apparatus.
>>>However, do you suggest that Russian Navy couldn't use Novorossiysk for military purpose if need be?
This 2013 report suggests that Sevastopol has superior all-weather access compared to Novorossiysk: [1] I'm not familiar enough with the meteorology of the region to articulate why. They probably could switch to the Caucasian coastline as a fallback plan, but I'm sure Russia looks at the problem from the lens of "we're a nuclear-armed Great Power, why the fuck would we compromise on this?" Sevastopol definitely provides better power projection across the whole Black Sea. [2]
>>>Well, Russia is now getting additional 1,340 km border with a new NATO member (real, not imaginary one like Ukraine) and is apparently completely unfazed by it.
I think they were completely blindsided by Finland abandoning its long-standing neutrality, and have very few tools in their toolbox to leverage. While the Finnish border threatens their access to the North Sea, it poses less of a risk to Moscow than the Ukrainian border does. If you wanted to take Moscow from Finland, you need to secure the M-11 highway as an MSR....which means you have to secure St. Petersburg (good luck storming a city of 5 million+) or bypass the metro area and leave your supply line exposed. Russia is moving conventional combat power from the North, just as Russia is moving conventional combat power from everywhere into the Ukraine wood-chipper. They've also stepped up rotations of nuclear-capable strategic bombers in the north as a compromise to signal "don't try anything stupid up here, we've got nukes!" Of course the Finnish Air Force is rather large and capable, so I'm not sure how credible that threat is. Overall I now rank Putin pushing Finland & Sweden into NATO as the greatest geopolitical failure of the 21st century, dethroning the invasion of Iraq. Interestingly, Stalin made some similar blunders in the late 1940s/early 1950s against the West.[3]
>>>Really makes you think whether they were really worried about spooky-scary NATO or pursuing some other goal in Ukraine all along...
Even when Putin had Ukraine as a borderline vassal state they were bitching about NATO expansion in their near abroad. Some of these arguments were made in the US Congress before Putin even came to power. [4] In particular, skip to the comments by Jonathan Dean and Michael Mandelbaum.
>>>this is not WW2, nobody is tank-rushing capital of nuclear superpower via highways lol.
It doesn't matter what you or I think about tank rushes, what matters is what the Russians think about tank rushes. [5] In case you missed it, they initiated this invasion with a multi-axis armored blitz towards Kiev combined with an air assault to secure a nearby Aerial Point of Debarkation. The Russian military establishment has maintained that the offensive is the key aspect of warfare, and that the tank is the key component of the offensive, since the 1930s. Their current military thought leaders also place a priority on "active defense" aka preemptive elimination of threats. [6]
The qualifier "of a nuclear superpower" doesn't add much to the conversation. Of the major nuclear powers, only India has a capital closer to an adversarial border than Russia (I don't count Pakistan or Israel as "superpowers")....and India maintains an exceptionally large tank fleet, and has fought some of the largest post-WW2 tank engagements between their capital and their border with Pakistan.
>>>you seem to be awfully poorly informed about European history
Pretty sure ad hominems are against HN guidelines, but since you wanna go there...
>>> USSR _were_ part of the alliance
Oh? What "alliance" was that, specifically? As always, the devil is in the details. There were only two signatories to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact: the Soviet Union and Germany. The Soviets had a bilateral agreement for the partition of Eastern Europe. That made them "co-belligerents", not "allies". They never signed any treaty with the Axis at large (for example, the Pact of Steel or the Tripartite Pact). They submitted a revised proposal for joining the Tripartite Pact to Germany which was quietly ignored as preparations for Operation Barbarossa were already underway. At no point in time was the USSR allied with Italy, Romania (14 divisions, almost 10% of the invading forces), Slovakia, Finland, or Hungary. There is one thing we can agree on: the Soviets absolutely miscalculated....when they took their Western neighbor at his word that he would adhere to the Non-Aggression Pact that they had signed.[7][8][9][10] And you wonder why the Russians have no desire to repeat that mistake, when we tell them NATO isn't a threat?
> This 2013 report suggests that Sevastopol has superior all-weather access compared to Novorossiysk: [1] I'm not familiar enough with the meteorology of the region to articulate why. They probably could switch to the Caucasian coastline as a fallback plan, but I'm sure Russia looks at the problem from the lens of "we're a nuclear-armed Great Power, why the fuck would we compromise on this?" Sevastopol definitely provides better power projection across the whole Black Sea. [2]
You are moving the goalposts again. OP stated that Russia don't have any warmwater ports outside Crimea which is obviously incorrect.
> I think they were completely blindsided by Finland abandoning its long-standing neutrality, and have very few tools in their toolbox to leverage.
They could sign a peace agreement with Ukraine and quickly move their armies north no attack Finland, no? I mean, if Russia _really_ considered having (more?) borders with a NATO-member an existential threat (like they always pretend when discussing Ukraine in that context), then that would make total sense.
> Even when Putin had Ukraine as a borderline vassal state they were bitching about NATO expansion in their near abroad. Some of these arguments were made in the US Congress before Putin even came to power. [4] In particular, skip to the comments by Jonathan Dean and Michael Mandelbaum.
Well, Ukraine offered to commit to neutrality multiple times during peace negotiations in February and March, but Russia rejected the proposals and proceed with annexing more Ukrainian lands. Isn't it by now settled that they were just using NATO boogieman as a pretext for trying to (re)build their empire?
> It doesn't matter what you or I think about tank rushes, what matters is what the Russians think about tank rushes. [5] In case you missed it, they initiated this invasion with a multi-axis armored blitz towards Kiev combined with an air assault to secure a nearby Aerial Point of Debarkation.
Which failed spectacularly and kinda proves my point?
Also, they assumed that after initial missile barrage on Ukraine military assets they will achieve complete air superiority which didn't happen. I don't think anyone expects NATO to quickly achieve air superiority in Russian airspace, including Russia's own military analysts.
> The qualifier "of a nuclear superpower" doesn't add much to the conversation.
Of course it does! Russian nuclear doctrine permits them to conduct the first strike when "existence of Russian state is in danger", so they will most likely just tactical nuke the shit out of (hypothetical) NATO grouping on their border that is in the process of assuming attack formations. This also coincides nicely with their "escalate to de-escalate" playbook.
> Of the major nuclear powers, only India has a capital closer to an adversarial border than Russia (I don't count Pakistan or Israel as "superpowers")....and India maintains an exceptionally large tank fleet, and has fought some of the largest post-WW2 tank engagements between their capital and their border with Pakistan.
I have no knowledge of India's or Pakistan's nuclear doctrines. Do they permit first strike?
> Pretty sure ad hominems are against HN guidelines, but since you wanna go there...
Where is ad hominem exactly? Your portrayal of the start of WW2 makes you look on either misinformed or malicious (more on your talking points later). The fact that in next paragraph you are seemingly making U-turn on that doesn't change the formulation of your previous message.
> Oh? What "alliance" was that, specifically? As always, the devil is in the details. There were only two signatories to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact: the Soviet Union and Germany. The Soviets had a bilateral agreement for the partition of Eastern Europe. That made them "co-belligerents", not "allies". They never signed any treaty with the Axis at large (for example, the Pact of Steel or the Tripartite Pact). They submitted a revised proposal for joining the Tripartite Pact to Germany which was quietly ignored as preparations for Operation Barbarossa were already underway. At no point in time was the USSR allied with Italy, Romania (14 divisions, almost 10% of the invading forces), Slovakia, Finland, or Hungary.
You are arguing semantics here (co-belligerent vs ally, etc.) while seemingly agreeing with me that USSR was one of the states that started the whole WW2 on the side of "evil western allies".
> TL;DR = Read more. Condescend less.
Well, you keep repeating Russian propaganda talking points and make it look like they were just peacefully minding their own business in thirties and then sneaky westerners cowardly back-stabbed them in forties. This is one of their favorite tropes how the whole world is against them and keep trying to either attack or contain them for no reason what-so-ever besides maybe some ingrained "russophobia". The very existence of Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact secret protocols was denied by soviets for longest time BTW.
These details, your comment history, repeatedly calling Kyiv "Kiev" and doubling down on describing Russian invasion in Ukraine as completely self-defensive measure against menacing NATO expansion makes me doubt you are arguing in good faith here, but calling someone a paid shill will indeed be against HN rules...
Was away from HN over the weekend, hence the slow response...
>>>OP stated that Russia don't have any warmwater ports outside Crimea which is obviously incorrect.
If Sevastopol is highlighted for its warm-water access, but Novorossiysk is not, then the issue is at best unclear.
>>>They could sign a peace agreement with Ukraine and quickly move their armies north no attack Finland, no?
Even leveraging interior lines and Russia's robust rail transportation network, pivoting 150,000+ men >1,100km (roughly the distance from Kursk to Petrozadovsk) is not something that happens quickly. Also, not all "NATO borders" are created equal. As I said, sharing a hostile border with Finland and sharing a hostile border with Ukraine do not present the same security implications for the heartland of the Russian state.
>>>Ukraine offered to commit to neutrality multiple times during peace negotiations in February and March, but Russia rejected the proposals
>>>Which failed spectacularly and kinda proves my point?
Yet the American "Thunder Run" into Baghdad was a spectacular success, and Russia's own armored drive on Tblisi in 2008 was also reasonably successful. The tactical concept isn't the failure point, the abysmal incompetence of the force trying to execute it is. Russia's armored blitz into Grozny in 1995 was also a brutal and costly failure. They had the same problem then of a poorly-led and poorly-supported underskilled army driving into urban terrain held by experienced and well-led veterans.
>>>Also, they assumed that after initial missile barrage on Ukraine military assets they will achieve complete air superiority which didn't happen. I don't think anyone expects NATO to quickly achieve air superiority in Russian airspace, including Russia's own military analysts.
The Ukrainians are turning off the search radars on their SAMs, and get fed extensive intelligence from practically every NATO ISR asset in Europe. They largely only activate their big long-range SAMs after NATO has already tipped them off to a threat. Combine that with generally threadbare Russian ISR of the Deep Battlespace, and Russian Air Force pilots not having the skill/experience to do very large US/Israeli-style strike packages. All of that has kept the airspace surprisingly contested.
By contrast, none of those limiting factors would apply to US airpower if we needed to peel back Russia's IADS. It's the one thing at which we are absolutely exceptional, and while Russian SAMs are still very respectable hardware, their personnel have demonstrated they are so incompetent/poorly trained....we'll probably walk all over them. Hopefully we don't have to find out.
>>>I have no knowledge of India's or Pakistan's nuclear doctrines. Do they permit first strike?
Same here, no clue.
>>>Where is ad hominem exactly? Your portrayal of the start of WW2
Rather than engage with the argument you attempted to attack my credentials and/or regional knowledge. I did not make a "portrayal of the start of WW2" [emphasis mine], as my comments contain no temporal specificity. I said that the Soviets were on the receiving end of an invasion from an alliance on their western border. That's an indisputable fact. I didn't clarify WHEN, merely that it happened, and that it colors their logic and thought processes.
Here's another statement about an adversary within my actual Area of Operations: "North Korea was on the receiving end of a bombing campaign that destroyed every structure larger than a footbridge in the country." That doesn't imply that the war was started by a US bombing campaign, nor does it assign any moral justification to North Korea's actions. It merely provides context for things that affect our military planning today, such as North Korea having thousands of underground facilities. The entire country is an underground bunker complex. I have to constantly bring this up to shake overconfident Marine Corps officers out of their complacency, by comparing a fight in North Korea to "like invading Iwo Jima, except the defenders have fortified a territory the size of Indiana". But back on subject...
The key take-away is that the physical borders of the Russian state are demonstrably insecure from the west. Attacking along the Warsaw-Minsk-Moscow axis has been used in 1812, 1915, and 1941 for a reason, all with catastrophic implications for Russia. Russia will continually act with extreme paranoia regarding its European frontier, probably until they have reliable buffer states as far as the Carpathian Mountains. Watch this Finnish Colonel for some background: https://youtu.be/CvonRMSuFpw
Dates. Distances. Timelines. Treaties. US Congressional discussions. You have contested the accuracy of none of them. If you conclude that they are all "Russian propaganda", perhaps you are simply DEEP in an ideological bubble?
>>>and make it look like they were just peacefully minding their own business in thirties
Don't put words in my mouth, at no point have I implied that. Your inference of such is entirely a product of your own biases.
>>>repeatedly calling Kyiv "Kiev"
I also refer to Volgograd as "Stalingrad", Myanmar as "Burma", and sometimes even Ho Chi Minh City as "Saigon". Again, anything you infer from that is a product of your own mind. Unless you spell Munich as "München" regularly, and do the same for every other native-language rendition of every city, in every conversation, then demanding usage of "Kyiv" is just a meaningless virtue-signal. As a side note, do some Google Searches with the date range feature. Reuters.com was using Kiev vice Kyiv in their English reporting as late as 2019. Why did they wait 5 years after Putin invaded the Donbas to switch? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-rally-idUS... Reuters is still using "Munich", BTW. Those dastardly Anglophiles. /s
>>>but calling someone a paid shill will indeed be against HN rules
I'm not just a defense contractor, I'm also a NATO military officer. Just because I serve Russia's #1 geopolitical adversary doesn't mean I let my brain fall out of my head to be filled with whatever palatable nonsense is swallowed uncritically from major western sources. The number of field grade officers I knew who took the "Ghost of Kiev" at face value was equally shocking and disappointing. You must understand the context of why your opponent is making the moves that they make, or you will be surprised, caught off guard, or otherwise ill-positioned to send as many of them to Hell as possible. I find "Pressing 'X' to doubt" on most of the talking points coming from friendly sources more useful than the opposite approach.
Also spend some time lurking on the various intel fusion chatrooms on SIPR or JWICS if you have an appropriate security clearance, and read some of the historical orders for things like when we wanted to put anti-ballistic missiles in Eastern Europe in 2007 (IIRC there are EUCOM Campaign Orders for that, you can search on Intelink.sgov.gov on SIPR). It's important to grasp what we're REALLY doing and not just what we say we are doing. You'll find yourself with far more questions than answers.
> If Sevastopol is highlighted for its warm-water access, but Novorossiysk is not, then the issue is at best unclear.
You seem to be hellbent on dying on that hill, but I don't see what is "unclear" about it since anyone can easily verify with 2 minutes of googling that Novorossiysk (as well as multiple other ports in the region) are warmwater. As someone who visited eastern Black See coast in January I can attest that water there is indeed in liquid aggregate state during the winter :)
> Even leveraging interior lines and Russia's robust rail transportation network, pivoting 150,000+ men >1,100km (roughly the distance from Kursk to Petrozadovsk) is not something that happens quickly.
But they would have managed by now if they wanted to, wouldn't they?
Well, I think you could find some hot take on Twitter (which your linked article seems to be based on besides unnamed "multiple former senior U.S. officials") that supports any kind of wild theory on any subject. (maybe martians torpedoed the negotiations? go figure!)
However, Zelensky had always been reasonably pro-Russian until such political position became completely untenable. Remember that the guy was elected on program to "stop the war that is only going on because Poroshenko and his goons are making millions on it and we just need to stop shooting and make peace with Putin", etc. so I don't see any motivation for him to continue it instead of reaping significant political benefits from bringing the peace to his people. I guess next thing you are going to tell me is how revolution in 2014 was completely orchestrated by the West (my friends that participated are still waiting for their paychecks BTW!) and other such talking points that people with your views likes to repeat ad nauseam...
> Yet the American "Thunder Run" into Baghdad was a spectacular success, and Russia's own armored drive on Tblisi in 2008 was also reasonably successful. The tactical concept isn't the failure point, the abysmal incompetence of the force trying to execute it is.
Both of these were executed in conditions of air superiority, which is exactly what I talked about in very next sentence of my previous comment, no?
> By contrast, none of those limiting factors would apply to US airpower if we needed to peel back Russia's IADS. It's the one thing at which we are absolutely exceptional, and while Russian SAMs are still very respectable hardware, their personnel have demonstrated they are so incompetent/poorly trained....we'll probably walk all over them. Hopefully we don't have to find out.
You assume NATO will just "walk over" Russian layered defense of endless Thors, Pancirs, Buks, S-300s and S-400s in hours to allow tank blitz on Moscow? That is a quite a surprising take for me, but okay. I mean, Ukraine _slowly_ putting them out one-by-one with HARMs, but it takes quite some time...
> Rather than engage with the argument you attempted to attack my credentials and/or regional knowledge. I did not make a "portrayal of the start of WW2" [emphasis mine], as my comments contain no temporal specificity. I said that the Soviets were on the receiving end of an invasion from an alliance on their western border. That's an indisputable fact. I didn't clarify WHEN, merely that it happened, and that it colors their logic and thought processes.
> Here's another statement about an adversary within my actual Area of Operations: "North Korea was on the receiving end of a bombing campaign that destroyed every structure larger than a footbridge in the country." That doesn't imply that the war was started by a US bombing campaign, nor does it assign any moral justification to North Korea's actions. It merely provides context for things that affect our military planning today, such as North Korea having thousands of underground facilities. The entire country is an underground bunker complex. I have to constantly bring this up to shake overconfident Marine Corps officers out of their complacency, by comparing a fight in North Korea to "like invading Iwo Jima, except the defenders have fortified a territory the size of Indiana". But back on subject...
Something that is factually correct but presented in certain way is one of the best and most effective kinds of propaganda. A quote from the master of the subject:
"Good propaganda does not need to lie, indeed it may not lie. It has no reason to fear the truth. It is a mistake to believe that people cannot take the truth. They can. It is only a matter of presenting the truth to people in a way that they will be able to understand. A propaganda that lies proves that it has a bad cause. It cannot be successful in the long run."
I believe is is important to frame the start of WW2 in the correct way. There is a reason why USSR/Russia propaganda always insist on framing that their Great Patriotic War started in 1941, and the reason is not because USSR had nothing to do with it in 39-40, quite the opposite in fact.
>The key take-away is that the physical borders of the Russian state are demonstrably insecure from the west. Attacking along the Warsaw-Minsk-Moscow axis has been used in 1812, 1915, and 1941 for a reason, all with catastrophic implications for Russia. Russia will continually act with extreme paranoia regarding its European frontier, probably until they have reliable buffer states as far as the Carpathian Mountains. Watch this Finnish Colonel for some background: https://youtu.be/CvonRMSuFpw
As a highly experienced military officer with access to all kinds of closed chatrooms with scary-looking abbreviated names what is your assessment on the likelihood of western invasion into Russia in 21st century? What would be the motivation of invaders and their plan to prevent the war from quickly escalating into nuclear? Do you believe that Russian analyst has different assessment than you on the matter? If so, why?
> Don't put words in my mouth, at no point have I implied that. Your inference of such is entirely a product of your own biases.
And I suggest that framing and wording of facts presented by you is an indication of your biases. Apparently we will have to disagree on this one.
> I also refer to Volgograd as "Stalingrad", Myanmar as "Burma", and sometimes even Ho Chi Minh City as "Saigon". Again, anything you infer from that is a product of your own mind. Unless you spell Munich as "München" regularly, and do the same for every other native-language rendition of every city, in every conversation, then demanding usage of "Kyiv" is just a meaningless virtue-signal. As a side note, do some Google Searches with the date range feature. Reuters.com was using Kiev vice Kyiv in their English reporting as late as 2019. Why did they wait 5 years after Putin invaded the Donbas to switch? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-rally-idUS... Reuters is still using "Munich", BTW. Those dastardly Anglophiles. /s
I don't see anything funny or "virtue signaling" on having courtesy to use geographical names preferred by people that live there. I didn't know that Germany prefers "Munchen", but I happen to mostly call it like that my whole life because that is how it is called in my native tongue (Russian).
> I'm not just a defense contractor, I'm also a NATO military officer. Just because I serve Russia's #1 geopolitical adversary doesn't mean I let my brain fall out of my head to be filled with whatever palatable nonsense is swallowed uncritically from major western sources. The number of field grade officers I knew who took the "Ghost of Kiev" at face value was equally shocking and disappointing. You must understand the context of why your opponent is making the moves that they make, or you will be surprised, caught off guard, or otherwise ill-positioned to send as many of them to Hell as possible. I find "Pressing 'X' to doubt" on most of the talking points coming from friendly sources more useful than the opposite approach.
So let's assume for a second you are actually who you say you are, as opposed to some FSB-dude (or even better-trained Olgino worker) and present you with very simple question: do you believe that security concerns are indeed _the main motivation_ for the invasion? no empire-rebuilding for ideological reasons and political gains involved?
Ok, I'll concede on the Black Sea ports discussion. Further digging points to this being an area of almost-negligent oversight in common discussion. For example:
Lastly, because of Russia’s geographical limitations, the research de facto chooses two of its only naturally occurring warm-water ports. Novorossiysk in the Black Sea was excluded from the analysis because it is primarily an economic port housing only part of the Black Sea Fleet (BSF),
>>>I think you could find some hot take on Twitter (which your linked article seems to be based on besides unnamed "multiple former senior U.S. officials")
The article links to Ukrainian Pravda which cites unnamed sources close to Zelensky. So are the Ukrainian journalists credible in their reporting, or not?
>>>But they would have managed by now if they wanted to, wouldn't they?
They don't have the manpower, partly because in their arrogance they waited 6 months too late to mobilize.
>>>I guess next thing you are going to tell me is how revolution in 2014 was completely orchestrated by the West (my friends that participated are still waiting for their paychecks BTW!)
Fully orchestrated? No. Subsidized and facilitated by the US State Department and NGOs? Yes.
>>>You assume NATO will just "walk over" Russian layered defense of endless Thors, Pancirs, Buks, S-300s and S-400s in hours to allow tank blitz on Moscow?
Not in hours. I'd assume at least 30 days for a thorough air campaign, with 1000+ sorties per day for at least the first week.
>>>Something that is factually correct but presented in certain way is one of the best and most effective kinds of propaganda.
With that mindset almost anything can be misconstrued as propaganda.
>>>I believe is is important to frame the start of WW2 in the correct way.
Except the point was never about the start of WW2. It was about identifying the terrain-related strategic vulnerabilities of central Russia which spans centuries. The purpose of highlighting the WW2 experience is simply that it is still within living memory and colors perceptions of Russian decision-makers more than, say, the Battle of Borodino.
As an aside, I also argue we should consider WW2 as starting in 1937 with the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. Eurocentrism of the major Allied Powers is the only reason we don't.
>>>what is your assessment on the likelihood of western invasion into Russia in 21st century?
Extremely extremely low. Always has been, just look at our force posture. But I absolutely assess that we aim to neutralize Russia as a Great Power, through a mix of external and internal pressures. I'd also argue that we've deliberately destabilized the nuclear MAD balance of power in pursuit of this goal, and everything that has happened in Eastern Europe in the past 15 years is fallout from that.
>>>What would be the motivation of invaders and their plan to prevent the war from quickly escalating into nuclear?
1) Undermine a Eurasian-spanning power bloc (reference Brzezinski's "The Great Game" for why)
2) Prevent the creation of an alternate reserve currency backed by Russian natural resources (oil + gold, Gaddafi wanted to do this before he was killed)
3) Finally eliminate the most credible nuclear existential threat to the US (China's nuclear triad, in contrast, is small and inadequate)
I don't think escalation can be prevented with sufficient reliability to approve a conventional regime change operation. The problem is, Russia's paranoid leadership likely sees things differently.
>>>Do you believe that Russian analyst has different assessment than you on the matter? If so, why?
Yes, because their lived experience and cultural environment is completely different. Their historical trauma + cultural ego/chauvinism combine to cause them to weigh the variables in the equation differently than I would. The Marine Corps suffers from similar issues, just in a different context. Our historical trauma = the Navy "abandoning" us at Guadalcanal, so we have an irrational attachment to maintaining our own air support, with stupidly-expensive/complex VTOL performance requirements. Our organizational chauvinism reinforces our refusal to source assistance from our sister services because we think we can do anything and everything by ourselves.
>>>do you believe that security concerns are indeed _the main motivation_ for the invasion? no empire-rebuilding for ideological reasons and political gains involved?
I think there must have been an assessment of security concerns and economic trends that led to "if we don't knock Ukraine out of NATO's orbit permanently NOW, it will only become impossibly difficult to do so in the future". Combined with a REALLY poor intelligence assessment of the West's reaction AND overestimating their own ability to successfully execute a regime change against the largest country in Europe, which has had 8 years of combat to improve itself.
But aren't the four (security, empire-building, ideology, politics) always inextricably linked? National leaders express "security concerns" usually because The Other Guy is interfering with their empire-building, both foreign and domestic. I loathe every time I hear a general talk about our vague "national security interests". A friend of mine used to provide communications support for Tier 1 spec ops units. He said "I didn't kick in doors with them, but I traveled with them and made sure they had working radios. What I learned was..... everything is about money, family, and power."
> The article links to Ukrainian Pravda which cites unnamed sources close to Zelensky. So are the Ukrainian journalists credible in their reporting, or not?
Dude, I'm Ukrainian and Pravda isn't exactly considered a paragon of journalistic integrity here. In fact, they are exactly the ones who would publish articles based on twitter hot takes and "unnamed sources close to X".
> Fully orchestrated? No. Subsidized and facilitated by the US State Department and NGOs? Yes.
Sigh People with your political inclinations (usually Russia-sympathizers) always bring "Nuland tapes" like some kind of slam dunk. They were discussing who would they have preferred to work with in future Ukrainian government. What exactly is so scandalous here in your opinion? You don't believe Russian diplomats had been discussing their preference at the time? Or that there weren't any strong words exchanged in private conversations of Ukrainian government officials regarding US president elections in general and Donald Trump in particular in 2020, for example? Were US president elections "subsidized and facilitated" by Ukraine?
Also, the conversation about the subject always goes in following way in my experience:
- The revolution was fully orchestrated by the evil collective West!
- How?
- Okay, maybe not orchestrated but payed for!
- People who participated still waiting for they paycheck, where do they apply?
...
- Okay, okay, but US gave some humanitarian aid aNd hEr tApeZ!!1
I personally know a lot of people who participated directly (for free, no Nuland or "drugged oranges" involved, if you get the reference), donated money, food or medical supplies, so please spare me your lectures about western spies paying opposition and hiring nazis to overthrow the legitimate government...
> Not in hours. I'd assume at least 30 days for a thorough air campaign, with 1000+ sorties per day for at least the first week.
I don't get it. You state they are afraid of sudden decapitating tank blitz on Moscow... that will be preceded by 30 days of bombardment? How does that make sense? Won't Russia just retaliate with nukes? (again, which is explicitly allowed by their nuclear doctrine and fits well with their "escalate to de-escalate" playbook)
> With that mindset almost anything can be misconstrued as propaganda.
With your background you should understand better than most how modern propaganda works. It is not a leaflet or poster with "Tovarisch, motherland calls you to kill evil nazi Ukrainians! Apply Now!" (though that still do exist and has its place in the toolkit) but bunch of dudes on payroll performing organized campaigns in social media to distort facts, set the framing and control the narrative. Your message history on HN fits that description perfectly BTW ;)
> Except the point was never about the start of WW2. It was about identifying the terrain-related strategic vulnerabilities of central Russia which spans centuries.
Except that they didn't have nukes during that invasions!
>1) Undermine a Eurasian-spanning power bloc (reference Brzezinski's "The Great Game" for why)
Russia creating "Eurasian-spanning power bloc"? With what? Dude, they have been getting their asses kicked by bunch of poorly-trained Ukrainians with some outdated stuff (Stingers, Javelins, M777s), some nineties tech (HARM, etc.) and very few relatively modern but limited pieces of equipment (~30 launchers with GLMRS, no ATACMS). You assume US are threatened by _that_ and are plotting to prevent Russian glorious domination of Eurasia?!
> 2) Prevent the creation of an alternate reserve currency backed by Russian natural resources (oil + gold, Gaddafi wanted to do this before he was killed)
Russians seem to be doing very well in sabotaging their natural resources business empire themselves at the moment, no need to tank-rush Moscow for that.
> 3) Finally eliminate the most credible nuclear existential threat to the US (China's nuclear triad, in contrast, is small and inadequate)
Fully eliminate nuclear threat... by provoking nuclear war with biggest adversary?
> I don't think escalation can be prevented with sufficient reliability to approve a conventional regime change operation. The problem is, Russia's paranoid leadership likely sees things differently.
Or they just pretending that they are "being threatened by big-scary NATO at their border" to legitimize their conquests?
> Yes, because their lived experience and cultural environment is completely different. Their historical trauma + cultural ego/chauvinism combine to cause them to weigh the variables in the equation differently than I would.
Aren't analyst supposed to analyze military capabilities and scenarios objectively? I mean, how stupid can they be? It is not like their analysis is performed by Kadyrov and Prigozhin, right?
> Our historical trauma = the Navy "abandoning" us at Guadalcanal, so we have an irrational attachment to maintaining our own air support, with stupidly-expensive/complex VTOL performance requirements. Our organizational chauvinism reinforces our refusal to source assistance from our sister services because we think we can do anything and everything by ourselves.
Irrational attachment or people who produce and sell the necessary equipment lobbying for that? There are clear financial incentives for military-industrial complex to keep things "with stupidly-expensive/complex VTOL performance requirements" which I consider more relevant explanation than some "historical traumas".
> But aren't the four (security, empire-building, ideology, politics) always inextricably linked? National leaders express "security concerns" usually because The Other Guy is interfering with their empire-building, both foreign and domestic. I loathe every time I hear a general talk about our vague "national security interests". A friend of mine used to provide communications support for Tier 1 spec ops units. He said "I didn't kick in doors with them, but I traveled with them and made sure they had working radios. What I learned was..... everything is about money, family, and power."
When US invaded Iraq or Afghanistan they didn't try to annex the lands. And even if you suggest it would be unfeasible to annex lands thousands kilometers away, they still could have easily annexed nearby Panama in 1990, for example. Here we see very clear divergence of stated goals ("We just want Ukraine to commit to not let spooky-scary NATO in", as if NATO is actually anxious to get in in the first place...) and actions (ethnic cleansings, forced deportations, annexations).
Do you think there was any realistic scenario where NATO could have accepted Ukraine with significant chunks of the country occupied by Russians since 2015 even without the invasion? And you think Russia didn't understand that Ukraine was not going to be accepted any time soon?
Well, your country being invaded by an incompetent horde of brutal assholes surely influences your ability to dispassionately assess the strategic situation, and the motivations of said assholes. I can understand it's hard to hear that the people slaughtering your countrymen aren't 100% at fault...more like 95% at fault, with the other 5% being sustained multi-decade provocation from....the country that is giving you every weapon imaginable to repulse the murderers. But Ukrainians are dying due to fallout from a chain of events initiated 15+ years ago, by DC think tankers with an irrational willingness to antagonize a Great Power on the opposite side of the planet.
>>>>They were discussing who would they have preferred to work with in future Ukrainian government. What exactly is so scandalous here in your opinion?
I would argue it wasn't a conversation of "wouldn't it be nice if" but them making decisions about who would be the leadership of Ukraine, which isn't something that should be decided by US State Department officials.
>>>With your background you should understand better than most how modern propaganda works.
These days we call it "information operations" and "psychological operations".
>>>> People who participated still waiting for they paycheck, where do they apply?
Don't be naive. The bottom-rank locals in any revolution don't get a paper trail directly back to the US government. Most people who are getting suitcases of US dollars have enough sense to keep their mouths closed about where it came from. $50,000 from an American who "works for an NGO" so the Maidan protesters can buy supplies -> $1,000 spent on supplies "with their own money" and $49,000 quietly pocketed.
>>>>You state they are afraid of sudden decapitating tank blitz on Moscow... that will be preceded by 30 days of bombardment? How does that make sense? Won't Russia just retaliate with nukes?
In order to retaliate with nukes, their nuclear deterrent and MAD has to be credible. Which brings us back to why they were so pissed off in 2007 about ABMs in Eastern Europe: putting an ABM umbrella on their doorstep means you can shoot down their nukes (boost-phase intercept profile), which means the conventional invasion of Russia can proceed with impunity.
>>>>Russia creating "Eurasian-spanning power bloc"? With what?
The Russians would be the western anchor of a military and economic partnership largely led by China. Putin and Xi have been orchestrating such for years.[1][2] The Russian military and Russian natural resource exports would be the main leverage against nations west of the Urals.
>>>>Dude, they have been getting their asses kicked by bunch of poorly-trained Ukrainians with some outdated stuff
Which has left a ton of military professionals flabbergasted. The Russians have demonstrated an embarrassing level of incompetence from the highest ranks to the lowest, and I don't think even people with a low opinion of the Russian military anticipated this poor of a performance. Well-respected combat veterans have held the Russians in pretty high regard since at least the Battle of Debaltseve. [3][4][5] But the Emperor has no clothes, so to speak. Their industry already wasn't able to sustain their grand military ambitions, but it certainly can't replace their losses, compensate for the brain drain, compensate for sanctions, etc....So the Russians are feeding themselves into a Ukrainian woodchipper, basically taking them out of the "Great Game" for at least the next 10 years, if not 20-40.
>>>>Russians seem to be doing very well in sabotaging their natural resources business empire
I think Putin expected the natural gas stranglehold on Germany to keep the Europeans on the sidelines. Not anticipating the severity of economic sanctions and the rapidity of Europe switching to alternative energy suppliers is just one of his MANY egregious miscalculations before undertaking his invasion.
>>>>Fully eliminate nuclear threat... by provoking nuclear war with biggest adversary?
1) I think the policy wonks wanted to salami-slice and encircle Russia until they could get good-enough ABMs in place. Putin has reacted kinetically before that could be completed. 2) Yes, whoever is sticking to the agenda of antagonizing Russia is an asshole, gambling the lives of the whole planet.
>>>>Aren't analyst supposed to analyze military capabilities and scenarios objectively? I mean, how stupid can they be?
I don't think most intel analysts are stupid, just human. On the contrary, the most consistent problem I see with them is the same Dunning-Kruger Effect seen on HN: they are intelligent, but think they are smarter/more knowledgeable about certain specific domains than they actually are, and come to egregiously bad conclusions due to underestimating the gaps in their knowledge base.
>>>>Irrational attachment or people who produce and sell the necessary equipment lobbying for that?
Both. But in the F-35's case definitely the blame lies mostly with the Marine Corps. Our demand for VTOL capability compromised the kinematics of the entire platform.[6]
>>>>When US invaded Iraq or Afghanistan they didn't try to annex the lands.
The US approach to imperial domination doesn't rely on "painting the map" directly. We dominate people's central banks and financial systems instead.[7][8] It's all about maintaining the Petrodollar/global reserve currency system, which allows us to essentially tax the entire planet and give every country monopoly money in return. Monopoly money which we also spend on our gigantic military, which enforces the acceptance of said monopoly money.
I'd say these are business as usual for brutal sociopathic Soviet-trained leadership, and also the only way that Russia has any hope of controlling the vast territory it's trying to bite off from Ukraine: get rid of all of the locals. Then there is no one to support an insurgency, no one to vote the "wrong" way during referendums, etc...
>>>>Do you think there was any realistic scenario where NATO could have accepted Ukraine with significant chunks of the country occupied by Russians since 2015 even without the invasion? And you think Russia didn't understand that Ukraine was not going to be accepted any time soon?
That would be the case if NATO adhered to the letter of its own laws/documents/policies. But I think the Russians don't consider that possibility as something they want to bet their future on. It would mean putting the future safety of the Russian State entirely in the benevolent hands of NATO decision-makers. I think after the 2007 ABM dispute, any perception of NATO benevolence in Putin's mind was shattered. Maybe we'll carve out a special exception for Ukraine. Maybe we'll re-write NATO's Articles to remove the "no existing territorial disputes" clause. Or maybe the US would just bully/bribe every other member into voting "Yes" to Ukraine. These sound unbelievable to most Westerners, but they are probably all realistic risks in the brain of a KGB field agent. So after Ukraine's constitutional amendment in 2019 [9], Putin probably decided to seize the initiative. If he spent a few months figuring out exactly how to respond, that would put him Summer-Fall of 2019....planning to execute an early 2020 full annexation. Then COVID hit, and Putin waited until the global pandemic was stabilized before setting in motion staging his troops for invasion (Fall 2021 with a planned January invasion)...then he had to delay AGAIN after Big Daddy Xi told him "Don't fuck up my Olympics with your war." So world events may have delayed a Spring 2020 invasion until Spring 2022, which means we're actually witnessing the fastest possible turn-around time for a Russian offensive, assuming Ukraine's amendment was the straw that broke the camel's back. It also means Putin may have planned an invasion while notoriously-anti-interventionist Trump was in office, but ended up getting puppet-on-warmonger-strings Biden in the White House by the time everything was ready. shrug Entirely supposition on my part.
> Well, your country being invaded by an incompetent horde of brutal assholes surely influences your ability to dispassionately assess the strategic situation, and the motivations of said assholes.
Dude, I'm not the hyper-patriotic type of Ukrainian :)
> I can understand it's hard to hear that the people slaughtering your countrymen aren't 100% at fault...more like 95% at fault, with the other 5% being sustained multi-decade provocation from....the country that is giving you every weapon imaginable to repulse the murderers.
You seam to have _very_ poor imagination then (ATACMS long overdue? DPICM? Abrams? Finally start teaching Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16s? Some Patriots maybe?). Also, now you seem to be putting words into my mouth since I've never said that it is "100%" their fault.
> I would argue it wasn't a conversation of "wouldn't it be nice if" but them making decisions about who would be the leadership of Ukraine, which isn't something that should be decided by US State Department officials.
Can you provide exact quotes where they are making such decisions?
> These days we call it "information operations" and "psychological operations".
Your point being?
> Don't be naive. The bottom-rank locals in any revolution don't get a paper trail directly back to the US government. Most people who are getting suitcases of US dollars have enough sense to keep their mouths closed about where it came from. $50,000 from an American who "works for an NGO" so the Maidan protesters can buy supplies -> $1,000 spent on supplies "with their own money" and $49,000 quietly pocketed.
I'm not being naive and I stand by my words. I remember back in 2004 there were indeed significant amount of people on Maidan Nezalezhnostii who were being paid daily to stand there with orange stripes. In 2014 main driving force of the revolution were middle-class people donating stuff or risking their lives directly by participating. All other forces were at best secondary and at worst inconsequential. Opposition politicians where routinely booed by the revolutionaries due to their meek positions and indecisiveness.
It seems you are intelligent person, but think you are smarter/more knowledgeable about certain specific domains than you actually are, and come to egregiously bad conclusions due to underestimating the gaps in your knowledge base ;)
> In order to retaliate with nukes, their nuclear deterrent and MAD has to be credible. Which brings us back to why they were so pissed off in 2007 about ABMs in Eastern Europe: putting an ABM umbrella on their doorstep means you can shoot down their nukes (boost-phase intercept profile), which means the conventional invasion of Russia can proceed with impunity.
That is strategic nukes. What about tactical nukes delivered by cruise missiles? Won't Russia just tactical nuke the shit out of theoretical NATO army that is in the process of assuming attack formation near their border?
> I don't think most intel analysts are stupid, just human. On the contrary, the most consistent problem I see with them is the same Dunning-Kruger Effect seen on HN: they are intelligent, but think they are smarter/more knowledgeable about certain specific domains than they actually are, and come to egregiously bad conclusions due to underestimating the gaps in their knowledge base.
You provided both a detailed description and a great example of described phenomenon in the same message ;)
> The US approach to imperial domination doesn't rely on "painting the map" directly. We dominate people's central banks and financial systems instead.[7][8] It's all about maintaining the Petrodollar/global reserve currency system, which allows us to essentially tax the entire planet and give every country monopoly money in return. Monopoly money which we also spend on our gigantic military, which enforces the acceptance of said monopoly money.
I know cool-realpolitik-kids like to explain everything in the world with "petrodollar", but I don't see how it is really relevant for invasion in Afghanistan, for example. Also, petrodollar system in not straight up win as such people seem to assume when describing it in edgy and simplified way e.g. "we just give everybody fake-monopoly money and force them to accept it with our military!!1". You can read a simple and balanced analysis that also discusses flaws of petrodollar system in [0].
> I'd say these are business as usual for brutal sociopathic Soviet-trained leadership, and also the only way that Russia has any hope of controlling the vast territory it's trying to bite off from Ukraine: get rid of all of the locals. Then there is no one to support an insurgency, no one to vote the "wrong" way during referendums, etc...
But why do they need all the referendums/annexations business if they invaded just to not let spooky-scary NATO in? BTW Russians themselves don't claim that they invaded only (or even mainly) because of NATO, so I don't know why you chose it as (another) hill to die on.
> That would be the case if NATO adhered to the letter of its own laws/documents/policies. But I think the Russians don't consider that possibility as something they want to bet their future on. It would mean putting the future safety of the Russian State entirely in the benevolent hands of NATO decision-makers. I think after the 2007 ABM dispute, any perception of NATO benevolence in Putin's mind was shattered. Maybe we'll carve out a special exception for Ukraine. Maybe we'll re-write NATO's Articles to remove the "no existing territorial disputes" clause. Or maybe the US would just bully/bribe every other member into voting "Yes" to Ukraine. These sound unbelievable to most Westerners, but they are probably all realistic risks in the brain of a KGB field agent. So after Ukraine's constitutional amendment in 2019 [9], Putin probably decided to seize the initiative. If he spent a few months figuring out exactly how to respond, that would put him Summer-Fall of 2019....planning to execute an early 2020 full annexation. Then COVID hit, and Putin waited until the global pandemic was stabilized before setting in motion staging his troops for invasion (Fall 2021 with a planned January invasion)...then he had to delay AGAIN after Big Daddy Xi told him "Don't fuck up my Olympics with your war." So world events may have delayed a Spring 2020 invasion until Spring 2022, which means we're actually witnessing the fastest possible turn-around time for a Russian offensive, assuming Ukraine's amendment was the straw that broke the camel's back. It also means Putin may have planned an invasion while notoriously-anti-interventionist Trump was in office, but ended up getting puppet-on-warmonger-strings Biden in the White House by the time everything was ready. shrug Entirely supposition on my part.
So what stopped spooky-scary NATO from accepting Ukraine after it first applied in 2008? And how much more time did sneaky US need to finally "bribe" all the other members to accept Ukraine as-is after the previous war? It is another favorite Russian propaganda talking point ("NATO was plotting to accept Ukraine!!1") when in reality it seemed to be completely not interested.
Nuland: Good. I don't think Klitsch should go into the government.
Pyatt: Yeah. I guess... in terms of him not going into the government, just let him stay out and do his political homework and stuff.
Nuland: [Breaks in] I think Yats is the guy who's got the economic experience, the governing experience. He's the... what he needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside.
Pyatt: Yeah, no, I think that's right. OK. Good.Pyatt: ... so I think you reaching out directly to him helps with the personality management among the three and it gives you also a chance to move fast on all this stuff and put us behind it before they all sit down and he explains why he doesn't like it.
So they came to an agreement that Klitschko should be outside the government, Yatseniuk should be in the government, and then got into the details of how to manage Klitschko (and later in the conversation, bring in other diplomats to help) in order to ensure they achieve what they wanted. It may not be apparent to a non-native speaker, but this isn't a conversation where they are just speaking hypothetically.
>>>Won't Russia just tactical nuke the shit out of theoretical NATO army that is in the process of assuming attack formation near their border?
Satellite ISR has a decent read on when/where nukes are being handled for the tactical varieties, and especially for the launch platforms. I would expect them to be priority targets during the air campaign. I would also expect the planning process to have Positive ID of x% of tacnuke platforms as a critical piece of the Go/No-Go Criteria...in other words, the invasion wouldn't be launched until the likely number of tacnuke "leakers" could be reduced below a certain threshold such that it wouldn't derail the armored thrust.
>>>I don't see how it is really relevant for invasion in Afghanistan
The initial invasion was an outlier in response to a Black Swan event, so no that's not directly relevant to the Petrodollar. Staying as long as we did? Arguably enabled us to threaten Iran from multiple directions, and also put US forces straddling the lines of communication between Iran and China (via the Wakhan Corridor). Those aspects supported Petrodollar maintenance.
>>>You can read a simple and balanced analysis that also discusses flaws of petrodollar system in [0].
I think I bookmarked this ages ago and forgot to come back and read it more thoroughly. Overall I agree that the dollar is due for a reckoning, and when it comes I expect a collapse of both the Western "international order" and the US economy. Hence why I think our global strategy reflects protection of the Petro even in cases where our values suggest we should have different priorities (example: not executing regime change in Saudi Arabia). But my point still stands: we can replace a nation's government, integrate their central bank, and despite not formally annexing their territory still benefit from their country economically, because we need to keep as many banks as possible generating demand for our toilet-paper-money, which they need to buy energy to run their economy at all.
>>>But why do they need all the referendums/annexations business if they invaded just to not let spooky-scary NATO in?
Ya gotta keep up appearances, for the benefit of the masses. And it creates a paper trail to trot out in international forums such as the UN later. "See, we totally did everything the democratic way. It's all above-board. Will of the people. We've got the paperwork." "Your referendums are BS because you killed half the people living there first." "You don't have the documentation to prove that."
>>>BTW Russians themselves don't claim that they invaded only (or even mainly) because of NATO, so I don't know why you chose it as (another) hill to die on.
Last December we proposed signing a treaty on security guarantees. Russia urged the West to hold an honest dialogue in search for meaningful and compromising solutions, and to take account of each other’s interests. All in vain. NATO countries did not want to heed us, which means they had totally different plans. And we saw it.
Another punitive operation in Donbass, an invasion of our historic lands, including Crimea, was openly in the making. Kiev declared that it could attain nuclear weapons. The NATO bloc launched an active military build-up on the territories adjacent to us.
Thus, an absolutely unacceptable threat to us was steadily being created right on our borders. There was every indication that a clash with neo-Nazis and Banderites backed by the United States and their minions was unavoidable.
Let me repeat, we saw the military infrastructure being built up, hundreds of foreign advisors starting work, and regular supplies of cutting-edge weaponry being delivered from NATO countries. The threat grew every day.
>>>So what stopped spooky-scary NATO from accepting Ukraine after it first applied in 2008?
But I SUSPECT the French were still opposed until this latest invasion. I don't have a clear picture on what Macron or his government thinks right now, other than being pissed off at the Biden Administration for fucking over France for the Australian nuclear submarine contract.
> So they came to an agreement that Klitschko should be outside the government, Yatseniuk should be in the government, and then got into the details of how to manage Klitschko (and later in the conversation, bring in other diplomats to help) in order to ensure they achieve what they wanted. It may not be apparent to a non-native speaker, but this isn't a conversation where they are just speaking hypothetically.
Oh please don't give me that crap. Your interpretation was not shared by mainstream press at the time as well [0]. Their English mastery is also apparently not good enough to understand the nuance!
Even if we assume your interpretation to be correct, I still don't understand how it would "prove" that the revolution was "Subsidized and facilitated" by the US.
> Satellite ISR has a decent read on when/where nukes are being handled for the tactical varieties, and especially for the launch platforms. I would expect them to be priority targets during the air campaign. I would also expect the planning process to have Positive ID of x% of tacnuke platforms as a critical piece of the Go/No-Go Criteria...in other words, the invasion wouldn't be launched until the likely number of tacnuke "leakers" could be reduced below a certain threshold such that it wouldn't derail the armored thrust.
So remind me again how is that mythical highway to Moscow is so important in case of all-out planned invasion that will be proceeded by at least 30 days of high intensity bombardment and highly likely escalate to nuclear exchange of some intensity? Won't Russians mine the shit out of it, blowup all bridges and evacuate everything and everyone of importance from Moscow to far east during that 30 days?
> I think I bookmarked this ages ago and forgot to come back and read it more thoroughly. Overall I agree that the dollar is due for a reckoning, and when it comes I expect a collapse of both the Western "international order" and the US economy. Hence why I think our global strategy reflects protection of the Petro even in cases where our values suggest we should have different priorities (example: not executing regime change in Saudi Arabia). But my point still stands: we can replace a nation's government, integrate their central bank, and despite not formally annexing their territory still benefit from their country economically, because we need to keep as many banks as possible generating demand for our toilet-paper-money, which they need to buy energy to run their economy at all.
Did you read it all, thoroughly or otherwise? The author stipulates that petrodollar system may not be beneficial for US anymore and that abolishing it would eventually lead to better outcomes for US themselves, instead of "collapsing both the Western "international order" and the US economy. [1]
> Ya gotta keep up appearances, for the benefit of the masses. And it creates a paper trail to trot out in international forums such as the UN later. "See, we totally did everything the democratic way. It's all above-board. Will of the people. We've got the paperwork." "Your referendums are BS because you killed half the people living there first." "You don't have the documentation to prove that."
But to keep spooky-scary NATO out it would have been enough to maintain puppet people republics indefinitely. Formally annexing the territories is only needed for building an empire, otherwise it doesn't make sense to pay the very high cost that Russia is incurring due to sanctions.
>It figures prominently in Putin's Victory Day speech
Well, on Victory Day NATO is a good boogieman apparently. On other days of the week it could be biolabs, "same people", Nazis, water to Crimea, etc. I could provide links for all of these, but I assume you are familiar with them.
> Strong opposition from France and Germany.
So you are saying there has never been a consensus among NATO members regarding accepting Ukraine and that some of its most prominent members strongly oppose it? Seems we are in agreement on this one!
"In the phone call, Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt, the US ambassador in Kiev, are discussing the planned government reshuffle ... The two diplomats express reservations about Klitschko, who is best known as a world boxing champion."
"At first, having the global reserve currency is an exorbitant privilege, because the benefits of hegemonic power outweigh the costs of maintaining the system. Over time, however, the upside benefits stay relatively static, while the costs keep compounding over time, until the costs outweigh the benefits.
And from there, the value of the system depends on who you ask. Folks who are often on the higher end of the income spectrum who worked in finance, government, healthcare, or technology benefitted from this system, since they obtained many of the benefits of globalization and none of the drawbacks. Folks who are often on the lower end of the income spectrum, specifically those that make physical things, are the ones that benefitted least and gave the most up, since their jobs were outsourced and automated at a faster rate than other developed countries. But now with China also undermining the structure of the system, even the geopolitical/hegemonic benefits for the political class are subverted as well.
As the system frays, it’s easy to point to external nations as the cause of this fraying. When they begin pricing things outside of the dollar-based system, or employing mercantilist currency policies, or building pipelines, or deciding to do something with their dollar surpluses other than reinvest them in US Treasuries, it can seem as though they are undermining an otherwise sound system.
In reality, those external actions are a symptom of the more underlying flaws in the system: the fact that the United States is no longer big enough as a share of global GDP to supply enough dollars to fund global energy markets and global trade, the fact that the United States has to run persistent trade deficits to get dollars out into the system, and the fact that an all-fiat global currency system incentivizes mercantilist currency manipulation by many countries to generate trade surpluses against the US wherever possible."
"In addition, a system constructed around the US dollar decades ago when the US was 35% of global GDP, doesn’t work as well when the US is only, say, 20% of global GDP. It’s not about how big the US military is to keep its hegemonic status; it’s about whether the global monetary system as currently structured is still mathematically viable, and whether it even still supports the interests of the United States.
Put simply, there is a natural economic entropy to global reserve currency status, because inherent flaws in the system continue compound until they reach a breaking point. The challenge, of course, is identifying ahead of time where that breaking point is. A change in the global monetary system doesn’t necessarily mean bad things for the United States (indeed, the United Kingdom had an economic boom in the post-war years after it lost reserve currency status), but it does mean making a trade-off between international interests and domestic interests, and re-aligning trade as needed to obtain the desired balance."
These people would rather be dead than under Russian rule. Why would 97% of them support continuing defense if not?
And don't forget that when Russians still thought they're going to win, they brought in mobile crematoriums and started filtrating people and sending them off to Siberia if not torturing and murdering them. It was never a question of "no war and survive" VS "die in war" - but "no war, die anyways" VS "war, possibly survive"
> These people would rather be dead than under Russian rule. Why would 97% of them support continuing defense if not?
Certainly this is not true of Crimea, where people have been independently polled by Western NGOs and the weight of the evidence is they want to be part of Russia.
> It was never a question of "no war and survive" VS "die in war" - but "no war, die anyways" VS "war, possibly survive"
Your thesis is that if Russia won they would murder a substantial %-ge of the population in mobile crematoriums?
> Certainly this is not true of Crimea, where people have been independently polled by Western NGOs and the weight of the evidence is they want to be part of Russia.
You mean "a very slightly bigger half of them", right? And that was before all this shit went down and Russians started to mobilize them. I wonder how they feel now, don't you?
> Your thesis is that if Russia won they would murder a substantial %-ge of the population in mobile crematoriums?
Nah, my thesis is that Russia started with it immediately.
Seems like we just don't know much about what they did there, yet. Let's see how many mass graves are there once Ukraine gets the land back. Are you going to put your money on it being 0? Or maybe they simply planned the genocide for later, you never know with these crazy dictators.
I mean, murdering and cremating isn’t the only bit of genocide. They’ve also bern taking Ukrainian children and adopting them out to Russian families, and filtrating out Ukrainian adults across Russia.
At the beginning and through most of the invasion they Russian stance was that Ukrainians are a fake people and don’t actually exist. If I was getting invaded by a group saying my people weren’t real I probably wouldn’t give them the benefit of the doubt that they’d treat me well or let me live if I laid down Armstrong
It looks like the thread got stuck on a technicality around the cremations. I think I still agree with the initial, wider hypothesis the poster had with
> It was never a question of "no war and survive" VS "die in war" - but "no war, die anyways" VS "war, possibly survive"
Especially if, like most groups of humans as were tribal, the dissolution of your tribe is almost equivalent to not surviving
> I view this as dehumanizing. I would rather live and not be an American than die while being an American. I suspect most people are the same.
Humans are tribal on average. I also suspect that there are >zero groups of which you are a member, that you wouldn’t be willing to make sacrifices for.
It may be the case that you personally are an outlier, but it doesn’t change the group dynamics and we are discussing aggregate group behavior and their in this thread, not specific individuals
> After seeing Ukraine turning into a WW1 quagmire
Ukraine is nowhere near a WW1 quagmire. The lines are far from static, and we've seen one dramatic rout a month ago resulting from a competently-executed war of maneuver operation that was completely impossible in the WW1 situation.
It looks less like WW1 (a war that ultimately came down to bleeding men until one side ran out, at which point the war effort came flying off the rails extremely rapidly) and more like WW2 (a war of maneuver where applying sufficient overwhelming force in a narrow front could and did produce overwhelming breakthough--even if it took a very large stack of operational successes to ultimately prove victorious in the war).
Taiwan have been preparing for this war since its inception. Taiwan will be going to war without Western support and I think most Taiwanese would prefer Taiwan burnt to the ground before surrendering without a fight.
If someone invaded my country there would be two outcomes: we win or I’m dead.
Sounds like normal foreign relations/diplomacy. It's all grey areas where politicians politick and diplomats maneuver to get what they want without anyone losing face.
Nah, fuck it. We're allowed to commit to war too. Xi Jingping is a tyrannical insane dictator and his successor will be worse. He needs to be stood up to, and no one is in a better position to do that than the US.
I think he's literally in the process of invading and subjugating a neighbor, actually. The Saudis might not call what's going on in Yemen an invasion, but it sure looks like it from here.
Yemen and the treatment of Khashoggi and many others by the Saudi govt could eventually yield a case for helping their neighbors resist them. Yemen is pretty horrible. We are stuck with oil dependence for now.
Yes, but it's a global market and there is not a barrier to oil at our border. SA increasing or decreasing world oil supplies affects the oil prices here. There's a separate discussion about the refineries in the US affecting the price of gas at the pump much more than the price of the oil. But let's focus on the fact that SA can increase or decrease the price of oil form them, it's a world wide commodity, and their actions affect the price people pay for oil in the us, because it's a world wide commodity.
Engage with less vitriol :) it's in the spirit of the guidelines.
What is the standard that we use for deciding what leader is worthy of intervention against? Is it the level of support among their own population? Is it how much they seek to export their ideology and take over other countries?
I understand the analogy you're making with Chess. But perhaps you could also view it another way: MbS is a terrible dictator (with even less legitimacy than the still-illegitimate Chinese political process). The US could easily crush him, compared to do anything to seriously confront China's CCP domestically.
Given that our resources would have a direct impact on people's lives in Saudi & Yemen, whereas we don't have much ability to have any impact in China, why is it better to invest our resources in fighting Xi Jinping?
Please don't post flamewar comments to HN, regardless of how bad someone is or you feel they are. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
How do you know "his people" like him, when anyone who criticizes the Chinese government either disappears or shuts up when the government threatens their family?
Highly recommend the economist’s podcast on Xi called ‘The Prince’
Xi became a Leninist and is trying to be the next Mao. He is a true believer that his glory and the glory of China can only happen by taking back Taiwan.
TSMC is a huge reason for this conflict. The current US policy is trying to slow China’s technological might for that next war.
There is a more simple explanation - if China wants a boat to travel from anywhere to Guangzhou, Tianjin or Shanghai then at the moment the boat has to pass close by an island that is a US ally. If China controlled Taiwan, that would no longer be true and they'd have easy access to the Pacific.
For the last 300? 400? years the dominant global superpower has been a naval power. You don't need to be a Leninist or a "true believer" to see China's future glory being helped by controlling Taiwan.
> There is a more simple explanation - if China wants a boat to travel from anywhere to Guangzhou, Tianjin or Shanghai then at the moment the boat has to pass close by an island that is a US ally. If China controlled Taiwan, that would no longer be true and they'd have easy access to the Pacific.
No, it would still be true. Just beyond Taiwan on the north side are the furthest islands in the Japanese island chain, and if you instead head south, you see Philippine islands instead. Head through the South China Sea and you end up either having to run past Singapore through the Straits of Malacca (already a critical, congested chokepoint), or travel through the internal waters of Indonesia or the Philippines (admittedly, I'm not sure you could call Singapore, Malaysia, or Indonesia US allies, given the general ASEAN propensity for neutrality).
They may be neutral, but China doesn't care much. I've personally seen in cca 2014 in Philippine's Palawan islands (near El Nido, great diving place btw) big modern military ship plus few smaller that were there stationed semi-permanently. When I checked online back then there were already some provocations from Chinese side happening so this was the response.
China already has easy access outside of the territorial waters of its neighbours. Taiwan's territorial waters don't really prevent it from operating. Less so than Japan, Vietnam and Philipines.
I don't even really understand what "glory" is supposed to mean here; I'm more a believer in the cold, hard reality of geopolitical survival : you can't be a global superpower when your own seafront is literally at the mercy of an hostile (and warlike) nation.
But China doesn't actually have a lot of technological prowess on their own. The USG might be trying to slow them down but they're not concerned about China militarily.
I worked for a defense contractor back in the early 2000s when the USG was selling a lot of arms and systems to Taiwan. I got to see the bullying in person via the ASOC (part of the C4ISR platform) system we were installing. China would routinely fly fighters over the straight to the boundary and fly the line and return to the mainland. I didn't understand the rationale at the time but the US was enabling Taiwan for their own interests in chips. China doesn't matter as much but Taiwan does. The US always had a large naval presence in Taiwan that I saw. China has a relatively weak naval force in comparison - but obviously enough forces to easily take over Taiwan if and when they really feel the need to. I think these programs just bought the US more time.
Ultimately though, China needs Taiwan for those chips. The problem being that if the major producers leave Taiwan then China is hopeless as they don't possess the capabilities or people to retool. They need the likes of Germany and others to even think about the ability to produce competitive processors to AMD / Intel. China can't build its own fab for these types of procs.
Finally, I didn't realize until more recently that China was, and still is, relatively incapable on their own. Some recent books put it into perspective for me on a global scale. But the fact that China just recently figured out how to manufacture a high precision pen is an interesting reference [0].
The US has no naval presence in Taiwan. USN ships might do port visits, but they have no basing rights. They will periodically transit the Straits on Freedom of Navigation (FON) exercises. The closest USN base is in Yokohama Japan.
We've got amphibious assault assets in Sasebo (Kyushu) and White Beach (Okinawa) but it's true that the bulk of 7th Fleet's major surface combatants are based out of Yokosuka (Yokohama).
I don't know if they had any basing rights at the time I was there, but given the USG was delivering weapons (military ships, etc) there was a large presence there at that point in time. I only know that through actual observations while on bases there.
Fundamentally the access to resources would make defending Taiwan exceptionally challenging. The real answer to the war though is disconnect our supply chain dependencies from China and let them sink into economic chaos, and that is easily winnable and already in work.
It's not easily winnable. It will take more than a decade to move so much manufacturing to other places. Many things will just stay there in China as long as they can.
>China can't build its own fab for these types of procs.
China can't build fabs for very small lithography processes yet. But 40 years ago they couldn't build almost anything. That changed. The fab situation will change, too.
That's entirely true. They're also decades behind at this point. Chip design and fabrication is an iterative process - if you don't have access to high precision manufacturing capable of building the machines that fabricate the chips you can't fab. China can't build those machines today.
Again, it's simple to say on a whim that China can go from building a lot of cheap electronics to building very complex microprocessors. But that doesn't change the hurdles or the reality.
Also keep in mind that if anything gets in the way of developing these processes - more supply chain breakdown, access to raw materials required to fabricate processors is unavailable or constrained, or China is dealing with any other number of issues along that path it will only take longer. Then realize that during this period of time the rest of the processes are enhanced and iterated leaving China even further behind.
So at the time China can fabricate chips that are outdated today, the world will be 20+ years down the road from where we are right now. The more you dig into all of the things that are needed for China to catch up the more it's apparent that it very well may not happen.
How? China doesn't possess the capability to build their own competitive chips. The chips they do manufacture do not require high precision. Everything I've read about China over the last few years has indicated it is, generally, unsustainable. From their disastrous fiscal policies of internal hyper-finance [0], their weakening navy [1], their aging population that's well on its way through decline [2] and the [3] continued climate issues that loom over China - it doesn't look all that great once you peel back the facade. China is in a big mess that started back then and continues to get worse under current leadership.
>China doesn't possess the capability to build their own competitive chips
The US doesn't either. ASML is the only supplier of cutting-edge lithography systems and they are Dutch, not from Taiwan or the US. Without them Intel and TSMC couldn't do what they do and US sanctions is why China can't currently build competitive chips. It is not because of some kind of US tech brilliance.
Look at the top 12 chip manufacturers globally. The ones that design the chips that run our everyday lives. They are mostly US based companies. The IP is within, mostly, US based companies. I posted this in another comment. This is why the US is heavily subsidizing bringing that to US soil [0]. This is preemptive, but in many ways, a bit late.
If you're saying the US doesn't know how to design and build chips then you're conflating two very different things. The US manufacturers used to build them here, but the global supply chain made it infeasible to do it on US soil historically. The US currently doesn't have the manufacturing capacity to fabricate the chips they design - but the actual R&D is here. China doesn't have that.
> It is not because of some kind of US tech brilliance.
If that's the case then please share one Chinese rival to Intel / AMD.
Intel owns a significant chunk of ASML but it’s always been a fully Dutch company.
That being said, ASML is 100 percent reliant on US Government research for their EUV breakthroughs, which is why the USG can tell them who they can and can’t sell to.
China has recently developed a low-altitude, hyper-sonic missile platform (DF-ZF) for which the USA doesn't have a great defense against. And this platform is specifically designed to attack carrier groups.
THAAD can theoretically stop these missiles but the range for doing so is extremely limited due to the speed (up to Mach 10) and low altitude these missiles fly at.
These are not true hypersonic cruise missiles (e.g. a SCRAMJet), instead they are ballistic missiles with an unpowered hypersonic glider warhead. Thus, they aren't too dissimilar from the way ICBMs work for missile defense with EKVs being needed to intercept. The intercept speed of EKVs IIRC is over Mach 25.
Thus, the interception goal would be to get them in their boost phase, or mid-course phase, rather than the terminal phase after they've launched the HGV (hypersonic glide vehicle). HGV phase, I think only laser/particle weapons would work given the time between detection and firing solution. But for mid-course, they could use SM-3/SM-6. The SM-3 is specifically designed for targets like the DF. So AEGIS systems with SM-3 might be effective in protecting US carriers as long as the launches are detected. The problem is, the HGV only spends a much shorter time in ballistic phase, and once it re-enters the atmosphere, it is no longer on a predictable ballistic trajectory.
That said, military tech often works much better in theory than in reality. The USSR/Russia had a fearsome military tech on paper, the evidence in Ukraine seems to be it was hyperbole.
I'm sure China would manage to sink some carriers if there was an all out assault with all their capabilities, that is one of their key goal. Nothing will be invulnerable. They'll have some other weapons no one knew about. But what will the US do then. Will we stage weapons in other countries around China, increasing the danger of a real world war? Will we manage to build bases on Taiwan that can be protected somehow? I hope I never find out.
>The USG might be trying to slow them down but they're not concerned about China militarily.
The one thing that matters in the long run is money and even though the US is fighting tooth and nail to halt China it isn't very likely to happen - who knows, we'll see. Whenever this discussion pops up it reeks of racism. People from China aren't less intelligent than people in Germany or in the US so with time and more money they will with 100% certainty overcome any technological gap. Sure they are behind in some areas but pretending they can't make a pen is disingenuous. They have had the capability to launch satellites since the 1970's and are now building a space-station. It is no different than saying the US can't make rockets because they had a lot of outside (Nazi) help after WW2. China has in a very short time-span gone from mostly agriculture to being in the top three in many (most?) high tech areas.
But in short can you explain why the US is using insane amounts of energy to slow down China if they are so totally incapable? Why do we need a completely new doctrine and pivot of the navy to be sailing around an utterly incapable and un-concerning China?
> Whenever this discussion pops up it reeks of racism. People from China aren't less intelligent than people in Germany or in the US so with time and more money they will with 100% certainty overcome any technological gap. Sure they are behind in some areas but pretending they can't make a pen is disingenuous.
It's not disingenous and it's not racist as I've laid it out. Facts are facts. I've never discounted the fact that China can't make electronics or that it can't, as a nation state, build satellites. What it's manufacturing sector, the bulk of China's financial success couldn't do was make a ball point pen as it requires precision manufacturing. That was not in China's wheelhouse until 2017. There are countries that excel in precision manufacturing at scale. You're conflating some very macro things.
> China has in a very short time-span gone from mostly agriculture to being in the top three in many (most?) high tech areas.
Define "high tech". The top 5 chip manufacturers in the world are: AMD (US), Intel (US), Broadcom (US), TSMC (CN --> Taiwan), NVidia (US). I'm curious if that helps you understand, better, what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about run of the mill electronics manufacturers. If you round out the top 12 - China isn't there: STM, NXP, Micron, LRC, Applied Materials, Texas Instruments, and Qualcomm - none of which are Chinese corporations. These are the companies that know how to build chips. Where is China in this mix? Because these are the companies you need to build high-tech things. Putting an iPhone together is not the same thing as building the chips in them.
> But in short can you explain why the US is using insane amounts of energy to slow down China if they are so totally incapable? Why do we need a completely new doctrine and pivot of the navy to be sailing around an utterly incapable and un-concerning China?
Yes. TSMC. They are the dominant, mass volume, manufacturer of these chips today. The US supply chain relies on this right now. Chip building isn't like retail where you can throw up a store in a few weeks and are off to the races. Building what TSMC has takes time. The US is buying time. That's why you slow China down and keep the issue of Taiwan at bay.
Again - I'm talking about R&D, chip design, intellectual property - in chips the US holds the majority of the major players. Yes, TSMC is manufacturing many of those chips today, but design and manufacturing are not the same thing.
It's appreciated when you read the entirety of the post before sharing information that's already been reviewed and incorrect information.
it's not racism. sure chinese could develope all these things on their own. but you need to realize, they'd have to produces the machines that produces the machines that produce the machines... first.
all this 'high tech' stuff is _really_ hrd to make. it would take a ton of money invested to even get to current tech levels. and tech advances pretty fast.
But I don't buy this argument. TSMC is a factor, sure. In that it likely increases the cost of war. The PRC shouldn't expect that by invading, they'll win TSMC (the company, the tech, the talent, the market share).
But I've always wondered if they need the tech or the land more. If it is the tech only, why not resort to industrial espionage or just kidnapping the key engineers from TSMC? Where does the core value of TSMC line on? It is the know-how, some specific machinery that is hard to replicate even if you have the blueprints or something else?
The PRC doesn't "need" Taiwan, either in a geographic sense or in an industrial capacity. This is purely a regime legitimacy test; the presence of non-communist Chinese right off the coast is a rebuke of the PRC. It's a bit similar to how Cuba is viewed in some parts of the US.
> If it is the tech only, why not resort to industrial espionage or just kidnapping the key engineers from TSMC
They know how to fab chips, they don't have the tech.
It would be far more useful to kidnap Dutch technicians and scientists from ASML. But that wouldn't be enough as ASML is also dependent on some key chemicals and tools manufactured in other countries.
Yes, but I think America will walk back it's current hawkish defense posture around going head to head with china over Taiwan over the next 10 years.
If they get into a fight, I expect the US to supply arms and money but not soldiers or marines.
This posture change will keep pace broadly with the American domestic chip fab industry.
>> If they get into a fight, I expect the US to supply arms and money but not soldiers or marines.
This is very obviously true, since China is a nuclear power and has ICBMs as well. We won't be involved in a hot war with them for the same reason we have been avoiding that with Russia.
I don't think you are right. Only if the pro-authoritarian Republicans seize power in the US. Trump, or others. The same factors that lead to Republicans wanting to help Russia could ultimately come to sway in Chinese policy in the US.
Voters in democracy tend to react better when debt or "others" are seen to be paying for things and not them...
I can assure you that if the everyday American saw in line item on their paycheck called "Ukraine War Tax" the public would be much less supportive, but since all the money is either printed, to debt then there is a disconnect between government spending, and the hidden tax of inflation everyone is paying but pretending to just be "greedy companies" and not government spending that is the cause
Don't worry. Politicians will be sending out mailers and running ads that put that "Ukraine War Tax" front and center into peoples' minds. Support for Ukraine is substantially higher on the left and is falling on the right as people begin blaming the war for rising fuel prices in the USA.
Republicans want the Presidency in 2024, and turning their base against Ukraine is going to be a pillar of their strategy.
People should be blaming decades of both Republican and Democrat spending policies, and a fed focused more on political goals than on solid classic economics which resulted in a over heated stock, and housing market that was never allowed to properly cool even after the market signaled several times there are systemic issues... Instead both the government and the fed just poured on the gas instead of putting water on the fire.
The War is just the needle that is contributing to the massive bubble popping
The best way for the EU to 'fight' russia would be to not be dependent on it for energy.
Russia can also do what it likes because of the constant nuclear threat. Russia has nukes that work, whereas the likes of the UK has a single nuclear sub that occasionally gets stuck on a sand banks. The Russians probably know where it is at all times.
Yup. It's actually the same answer how we should have fought middle eastern terrorism after 911. The answer was for the west to become energy independent from the middle east as fast and sustainability as possible.
Fortunately there are other nuclear powers in the EU.
It was one EU country in particular that was very vulnerable for a few separate reasons for the Russian gas politics, but they have seen the errors of their ways at long last.
Dependence on Russian energy is significantly reduced and there more than every intention to reduce this to zero. Note that the intention was always there, gas was only ever a stopgap between now and fully renewable.
Nominally, Russia has roughly the same number of nukes as the US.
The US military budget is 700bn/yr and it spends 60bn/yr in maintaining its nuclear weapons. So 60bn/yr is a good estimate for what it costs to maintain a US/Russia-sized nuclear weapons arsenal.
Russia spends 60bn/yr on its military in _total_. However much of that goes into maintaining its nuclear arsenal is clearly not nearly enough. By all accounts Russia can't even maintain its trucks. Most likely the budget for nuclear maintenance is "disappearing" the same way that much state money disappears in Russia. Surely no on believes that Russia has been spending 60bn/yr since the 70s, when the last nuke was detonated.
Russia no longer has nuclear weapons, you heard it here first.
Even if they have only one working nuke, in the right spot it would still be hundreds of thousands or millions dead/injured and a crippled nation for at least a few years.
I have some bitter taste about that myself. First they offshore[1] to anywhere, but US, but the moment US makes it geopolitically risky, US recompenses Intel by offering massive incentives to re-shore. It is maddening. The worst part is, making chips is actually hard so there is a good and valid reason to actually do it, but I just hate rewarding bad behavior ( from US taxpayer's perspective ).
It would be stupendously bad judgment to permit the semiconductor fabrication industry to exist with no redundancy whatsoever. Tail risk is ever present and the tails seem to be getting fatter every day.
It seems silly to measure short term success in an industry known for "notoriously cyclical" booms and busts. The size of the investment needed to create these manufacturing plants in the US, coupled with the complexity and time it takes to build them, combines perfectly for articles like this.
I can't think of a reason that on-shoring chip fabs would be a bad thing for the US - other than the vague threat of China retaliating. Cutting off foreign dependencies in high-tech industries would surely be beneficial in the long term.
It's the people, the talent, the knowledge that drives any industry like this.
The US government, US, we, gave Intel and some other companies a huge sum of money to stay awesome.
Then they announce huge layoffs to get rid of a lot of thr talent, people, heart of their business.
So, wouldn't we have been better off as a society of we had just offered thT CHIPs money as a startup find and asked a bunch or people from Intel to leave and build new semi companies using this fund?
In the end the meteic for success of the CHIPs program in the short term should be number of people working in semi in the US. How did we dedicate money and resources to this thing of national importance and end up with fewer experts working on it?
Money is the root of all evil, power corrupts us all.
Targeted layoffs might be the best thing long-term.
From my limited perspective of having recently worked at Intel, they had a lot of dead weight. There was a lot of talent, but it was also diluted by a lot of management and bureaucracy.
I honestly don't know if layoffs are an effective solution to this, but IMHO they could definitely benefit from lower headcount and greater urgency.
Thanks for this. I see that perspective and from my experience in larger tech corps it jibes.
I'm still trying to reconcile it with the CHIPs thing. Intel on one hand is admittedly bloated and inefficient, and so is choosing to reduce its headcount and therefore bandwidth to do work.
So what is the CHIPs money going to. Typically when you invest in something like this you are buying people's time to do the work and also materials and supplies to build the stuff like factories, etc. So if we are lowering headcount it's not going to labor.
I suspect as you say it's more about changing worker types, like getting rid of skillsets they don't need so they can hire those they do like people to build semi plants here.
So, in my mind, the only way it adds up is if Intel goes on a big hiring spree soon. Otherwise, where did the money go? We can buy equipment to build plants but who builds them?
I don't have any insider info on this, but here's my guess:
Gelsinger thinks x86's days are numbered. So Intel's historical moat of designing and manufacturing x86 chips is going away.
So now it's more compelling to treat design and manufacturing as separate business concerns:
- For potential foundry customers, it reduces fears that Intel will give higher priority to fab'ing its own chips.
- It frees Intel's chip designers to design chips without needing to assume they'll be built at Intel's foundries. E.g., they can design chips for TSMC's process if that would result in a better product.
And given all these factors, I suspect Gelsinger and the Intel board of directors are planning to separate the design and manufacturing functions into separate businesses. (Either practically speaking by limiting their interaction within Intel, or literally by making them separate companies.)
This matches what I've heard about Intel from friends who have worked there. I had a firmware programmer friend who's job was literally to copy data from excel files to .h files and when he offered to automate the process was told that the manual transfer was the process he should follow. He described his role as dead weight.
well-connected one-percent chick goes to work for Intel Security long enough to get health care for babies then quits. At the same time, competitive University grad-with-honors working class girl does protests and environmentalism, can't have children with no health care, ends up hanging out with lots and lots of other thirty year olds in the same boat, with debt. Just another day in America.
But what did they major in? Did the well connected person major in CS while the honors grad major in underwater basket weaving? We are in a free market system that is not perfect at evaluating talent but things like degree help provide signals to employers.
----- B--- (Hupa) received a BA from Stanford and wrote her 2017 Berkeley PhD dissertation Wailaki Grammar on a Dene language spoken along the Eel River in northern California. Now an Assistant Professor of Native American Studies at Humboldt State University, her research focuses on Dene languages, and on historical-comparative linguistics for language revitalization within the Wailaki and Hupa communities. While at Stanford and Berkeley she also worked with speakers of Karuk, Yucatec Maya, and Sereer. B---- is a coauthor of "Xo’ch Na:nahsde’tl’-te: Survivance, resilience and unbroken traditions in northwest California" (2019, with Cutcha Risling Baldy, in Ka'm-t'em: A Journey Toward Healing), and has contributed to the Hupa Online Dictionary and Texts project (at UC Davis). She is also a traditional basket weaver and singer from the Xontah Nikya:aw in Hoopa Valley, and a member of the board of the Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival.
Yah great point, the US culturally seems to really struggle with the idea that the business is just an arbitrary conception, what is important is the workers. We really have a disturbing sense that arbitraries collections of capital and legalese are more important than humans with passions and skills and it honestly scares me.
Yeah, it's amazing the number of people who believe that corporations exist in the same objective sense that puppies do, rather than the social-consensus sense that D&D characters do.
Imo the closest analog to a corporation is a program. It objectively exists like puppies do, but only when it's executed by the hardware, which are the people. Otherwise it's just a stack of documents without any real power to affect the reality.
You can easily guess what the purpose of the program is.
Mathematical constructs like programs and theorems are a third category; they have structure and properties that don't depend purely on social construction the way a company's bylaws do. Of course which sets of axioms we prefer to reason from is socially negotiated, but once you've decided on a set of axioms, you don't have any freedom of choice about the consequences. This gives propositions about them a kind of objectivity that corporations or D&D characters lack. It can never be objectively true or false that a given corporation is, for example, bankrupt, but it can certainly be objectively true or false that a theorem is correct, or that a program performs an out-of-bounds array access when executed on the input "-0".
1500 years ago, Aryabhata came up with an algorithm for approximating an integer ratio with (what we today call) continued fractions, and we use it today for that and for inverting elements of finite fields. Aryabhata was a Hindu, speaking Sanskrit, living in a monarchy; no corporation he formed part of still exists, or could exist, at least according to accepted legal principles. Yet his algorithm continues to be correct today, and like the movement of the Earth, it would continue to be correct even if nobody believed it.
Platonists believe that mathematical constructs like programs are actually more objectively real than things like stones or puppies, because propositions about them have a truth-value that is independent not only of the speaker's social context but also of time. Today this puppy is alive; tomorrow she will be dead. The Pythagorean Theorem doesn't do that.
The knowledge and talent is definitely very important (I mean in the long term everything in technology is knowledge and talent) but there are also the extremely expensive semiconductor fabs to be considered.
The CHIPs bill was pretty broad. It might make sense to subsidize a pure-foundry company as an ongoing issue (in particular, isolate these big investments from the boom-bust semiconductor trends). Or somehow try to come up with subsidies that go to Intel to the extent to which they act as a pure foundry, but that will be pretty tricky to work out I guess.
An ecosystem of open fabs seems to be a prerequisite of those small plucky startup chip design teams. Of course they can order from TSMC but then they have to wait however many weeks to test out each prototype...
>short term should be number of people working in semi in the US
it's not a jobs program and majority of the layoffs are targeting non-technical areas. Raw number of engineers isn't a great metric for government programs either, could be easily gamed. Focus should be on building up the ground level infrastructure needed so actual innovation can happen, not just giving money to Intel and other established players to further strengthen their monopoly
So far the rumor is that they're laying off marketing folks, not engineers. And we paid them to expand their microchip infrastructure, not create jobs.
Thanks for this. I'm curious to dig a bit deeper. What is involved in expanding their microchip infrastructure? What would funds be spent on? It seems like hard tooling, buildings, fab lines, and then they need people to build install and run all that stuff. I guess I'm asking - am I missing something, like can they expand their microchip infrastructure without the labor of people? In my experience designing automation for fabs there is a ton of skilled labor that goes into every single fab, both to design and set it up but also to run it.
We honestly should nationalize intel, raytheon, boeing, and lockheed martin. Probably others too. It makes no sense to develop our sensitive technology and reserve some resources solely to feed the parasite that is the profit margin.
You could run them exactly how they are structured today if you want. Youd reap savings by not having shareholder profits to maintain and could use that money that would otherwise be wasted on luxury spending for major shareholders for more R and D.
Couldn't any hypothetical governmIntel competitors also just lobby to run it into the ground? (or, perhaps one of the political parties will just want to run it into the ground in an ridiculous attempt to prove that the government can't work).
Committing to purchase X quantity of Y from a factory that already exists in a competitive market to make Z is different from removing the need for the company to make ends meet
That's from April, but in short there's a huge order backlog that they're still working through apparently, despite producing half a million units per month. With the lockdown gap in production and the Pi 4s getting increasingly integrated into various 3rd party products I suppose that's no surprise.
It's quite apparent that there's little demand for the Pico, since it's always in stock.
> It's quite apparent that there's little demand for the Pico, since it's always in stock.
Without additional context (which perhaps you have and used subconsciously) that's not evidence that there's less demand - just evidence that the ratio of demand to stock is lowest. It could be that it has 2x the demand but they prioritised it and produced 3x as much stock, or it could be that a specific component makes one product easier/less delayed than the other to make (in which case equal demand could still lead to only one being regularly in stock).
If for example 100 people a year want to buy a product $A, and 10 a year want to buy product $B, and the company manufactures 200 $A's a year but only 5 $B's, then $B will be out of stock more despite being far less popular.
Or course this partly relates to how well a company predicts future demand when deciding how much of each product to create. But in many cases (though I would guess not when it comes to The Raspberry Pi Foundation) marketing therefore also becomes a factor - in that companies may see value in either creating slightly less than they expect there to be demand for, or artificially limiting / lying about stock levels, in order to get people thinking "wow it's out of stock so it must be popular!"
Well it's either an overestimation in production or an underestimation in demand. Or likely both to some extent in this case.
I bought a few of them a while back and have only recently managed to integrate one of them into a really basic project. They tried to make some kind of middle ground between an ESP and an Arduino, while providing an incredibly buggy MicroPython build and no Arudino IDE integration. Some of that's been corrected, but it still remains this all rounder thing that's never the best choice for the application.
> Well it's either an overestimation in production or an underestimation in demand.
Or they correctly estimated, planned not to go out of stock
and were able to succeed. Jumping from "it never shows as out of stock" to "therefore they must have badly estimated one or both of supply or demand" is even stranger a leap of thinking than the initial misconception of thinking that not going out of stock proves low demand.
In both this comment and the previous one, you're guessing at a possible explanation while writing as if you know it to be the correct explanation.
(Sorry for coming across all critical, hopefully learning what can and can't be construed from a product being in stock is worth my negativity!)
You can probably just ignore them as a concern at this point. Nobody is going to want to use them in new products. They might keep going as a educational novelty but the magic is gone as far as using them in commercial/industrial products.
Because you can't purchase them at scale. And haven't been able to for a year. If I'm making a product I'm not going to pick something I can't get. And I'm not going to switch back once I've found something else.
Eben says to embrace the Pico and buy the rPi400 because it does not compete with orders from industrial customers (that spent bazillions on testing/certification of their rPi4/rPi3-derived products and therefore receive some priority above the poor huddled masses yearning to breath free air). If you aren't down with Pico yet, I recommend googling Limor Fried and searching her company's site.
As far as Intel goes, they've been on oxygen for decades with the technological advancements they appropriated from DEC, while at the same time selling off the DEC-designed StrongARM technology and exploring new ways to generate heat and waste power. At this point, they have a formal relationship with TSMC and a government mandate to turn the Rust Belt into the Silicon Belt, so don't count them out (unless you are 75 or something, because it will be 10-15 years for all of that to happen), but to guys like me (and I would imagine most people on a site like this), they're about as relevant now as IBM (/s) In the meantime, we need to convince Apple to sell its consumer chipsets, maybe with an incentive from USA (either money or an agreement not to prosecute them for investing so much training and capital in China that they feel comfortable announcing their plan on TV yesterday to murder as many people as necessary to return Taiwan to 1895 legal structure).
That's the problem. He's not even wrong. That whole comment is just incoherent rambling.
What does the Pico have to do with RPi shortages? Why would anyone buy a rPi400 as a RPi replacement? WTF does 30 year old DEC tech have to do with today's Intel? Why force Apple to sell consumer chips and how does he think that's gonna work out in the long run when all the software required to use them is single-source?
> American chip bosses now fear that China could retaliate
They will certainly retaliate. The question is how. Most think they will react similarly, banning cutting edge electronics exports that could have military use.
But I suspect they will go after our weak spots. Prescription drugs, solar, lithium. I'm sure there are more.
Note that the typically given P/E ratio is a backwards looking number, not forwards.
Intel trades at 5.5x PE for the last 12 months but 12.1x PE for the next 12 months (estimated, obviously). Intel specifically is also not at an "all time low" - they IPO'd in 1971 and have grown significantly since then.
I agree there are some bargains to be had in semi stocks, but keep in mind things may very well get worse before they get better.
Seems like a dumb article - their whole argument is that we should NOT be building fabs in the US because demand has recently fallen and we MIGHT end up with too much supply?
Seems like a good thing to be honest. More supply means cheaper prices and even if demand is a bit lower there is no way it is going to keep going down. We have CPU's in damn near everything these days. The drop is probably mainly because of crypto mining falling of a cliff.
It's reasons like this why the DPA and other mechanisms exist. Having sufficient fab capacity in case global supply lines experience disruption is a strategic reserve of high national security importance.
That’s true. But then supply, demand, and price are irrelevant. The challenge is making optimal decisions about investment. Markets tend to be brutal to producers who aren’t efficient, and that leads to a Darwinian process favoring the momentarily optimal producers. Production by fiat leads to weird outcomes. DPA mandated and funded fab facilities will probably in the future be wildly out of date with private producers ensuring we can only produce antiquated processes or using extraordinarily inefficient processes.
I’m no libertarian market wacko, and I think it’s important to have decentralized production and as a planet we probably jumped the shark with centralizing Asia as the production hub for manufacturing and fabrication. But I’m dubious DPA etc are sufficient measures.
My point though was low prices and softening demand is NOT helpful as the prior poster asserted. It hurts the effort because the lack of margin and scale means only fiat production is possible, with poor long term outcomes.
Oh no, if only it were possible to expand the use case of cheap and affordable chips. It's not like we can put computer chips into devices like refrigerators, thermostats, watches, lights, tea kettles, ovens, cars, bicycles, musical instruments, desks, keyboards, doors, sorry, I lost track what we were talking about. Seems like we can put computers in literally everything. Isn't that what the IOT people promised us?
Not sure how well/bad is AMD doing right now. Have been using Intel machines for over two decades now but not long ago I finally switched to AMD with my new PC and I regret haven't done so earlier. In the meantime, I'm also about to ditch Windows. I guess I'm not alone. Time to say goodbye to Wintel league.
That's more or less irrelevant, AMD is one of the many fabless companies like Qualcomm or MediaTek. Intel makes it's own chips, and now wants to make chips for other companies as well. They may end up making AMD processors one day.
Samsung makes a lot of money manufacturing displays and cameras for Apple. They are working on an under-display sensor too that's going to replace the notch in the future.
Intel used to make a processor with AMD graphics and 4GB HBM2 (Core i7-8809G).
I know nothing about the chip-making process, and news about fabs and the chip industry confuse and scare me.
Can anybody link me to a guide with the basics of these topics, like what exactly is a chip (is it a microcontroller? a part of a larger system?), or why the few giant fabs can't be replaced by a lot of smaller and cheaper ones?
There are two parts to making chips: architecture (design) and process (how it's manufactured). Intel does both but eg Apple only does design and outsources manufacturing to other companies.
There are lots of different chips ranging from slow, energy efficient, and cheap microcontrollers, to fast, energy hungry, and expensive high performance computing clusters. Intel makes the fast ones, and had the fastest chips from the late 1990s to the mid 2010s. Since then, a Taiwanese company has had the fastest chips which go into iPhones, Nvidia graphics cards, and AMD cpus.
Building a fab (manufacturing plant) to make the fastest chips which require features shorter than 7nm (billionths of a meter!) requires billions of dollars in up front investment. It's mass scale manufacturing at some of the lowest levels anything has ever been created at.
The US gov't is afraid that company which makes the fastest chips in Taiwan (which is not recognized as an independent country, but is effectively self governing, but China claims is theirs, it's complicated yes), could be under Chinese control some day. The Military Industrial Complex don't want the US tech sector or US defense tech to be beholden to China, and US companies (Intel) want government funding to build expensive factories. Thus the CHIPS act.
Thanks (O/T: copy-pasting text into vim to even read TFA high times to flag ad-ridden, basically unreadable content, or not link to it in the first place)
You can decide for yourself whether or not you want to go to the extra effort to read the content. And then the rest of us can also decide for ourselves.
Yes, please more of this thinking. With all of the choice we have now, personal agency is not valued at a time when it needs reinforcing the most. Take care, stranger.
To be perfectly honest, this is still within a 1000km radius circle that encompasses Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. That covers the majority of next-generation fabs that aren't Intel.
It's great to legally diversify these fabs, but it does very little to mitigate geopolitical issues that are brewing in and around the east china sea.
How does it do little to diversify these fabs? The current situation is that if China invades Taiwan, the entire Western world is compelled to engage militarily over Taiwan's high end chip fabs. It cannot be overstated how much we depend on that, if TSMC operates in other countries, we don't HAVE to engage in WW3.
A fab in Ohio, Oregon, or Arizona 10,000 km from China is safe from threats like cruise missiles that the proposed fab 1000 km from China in Japan or South Korea would not be.
It's not so much that cruise missiles used on civilian targets in South Korea or Japan would not be a reason to start WW3, more that it would be less tempting.
I'm confused by this take. Who is threatening Japan with cruise missiles? Certainly not China or Russia. North Korea, perhaps.
The primary reason that we're concerned about semiconductor fab concentration in Taiwan is that China has consistently stated that it is going to invade Taiwan at some point (and that could be 2049 or in a few years for all we know). This is completely outside of any hypothetical scenarios of who lobs cruise missiles at who during WW3.
You can make the point that relying on semiconductor manufacturing outside of your country/coalition is a bad idea for military self-sufficiency, and I would agree, but that's a much more diffuse risk than the very specific scenario that is driving the CHIPS act and concern about fab concentration in Taiwan.
> Who is threatening Japan with cruise missiles? Certainly not China or Russia. North Korea, perhaps.
China has said that they believe that, in the event of hostilities over Taiwan, they will be obligated to strike US forces everywhere in the region -- and the US Navy still has a strong presence in Japan. Also S. Korea and the Philippines.
This means potentially launching missiles at these countries too, and the Chinese have made it very clear to all involved that they will consider and/all US allies in the region as potential belligerents and act accordingly. AKA military action against Japan and SK, and possibly Australia and NZ. It is just another part of the Taiwan political calculus.
Point is: moving the fabs out of Taiwan doesn't mean shit if they're still in a country that China could strike, and in the case of Japan, would likely strike, in the event of hostilities.
> China has said that they believe that, in the event of hostilities over Taiwan, they will be obligated to strike US forces everywhere in the region
Do you have a source for this? I haven't heard this stated before, but I'm not an expert here.
Even taking this as true, I think it's a big leap to go from striking US military bases in Japan, to striking civilian infrastructure in those countries.
It seems quite clear to me that the opening salvo you are hypothesizing (attacking multiple military bases and civilian targets) would be an act of war against the USA and Japan. This would certainly provoke all-out war with the US, and they have a first-use policy that could entail a nuclear response.
Frankly the whole scenario above seems extremely unlikely to me, and I think Ukraine is the better example to model here. Essentially, China occupies Taiwan, and dares the US to strike in retaliation, knowing that their retaliation would be the thing that triggers armageddon, and betting that the US is not actually willing to escalate militarily over Taiwan. I predict that China would take an effort to avoid attacking any US military personnel stationed in Taiwan (I gather this is just an unofficial presence), because the rational play is to give the US as little excuse as possible to escalate in response.
In other words, China MUST offer the US a path to de-escalation/capitulation in order to take Taiwan without a war with the USA. It's much easier to take Taiwan without a full war with the USA (obviously, IMO).
They're not even remotely capable of doing that before US intervenes. Taiwan is a heavily fortified island with unfriendly geography and a massive high tech army.
Sure, I'm not making any claims on whether they can successfully do that, just that in this widely-studied geopolitical contest, it's the most likely move that they will attempt to achieve their publicly-stated goals. (And not some crazy all-out war on the US and its allies as GP was proposing.)
FWIW on the likelihood of this specific claim, my impression is that the Pentagon considers it likely that they will try to annex Taiwan at some point in the next decade, e.g. see yesterday's headlines from Blinken (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-17/blinken-s...).
I don't have any particular domain knowledge to judge how hard it would be for China to occupy Taiwan (or how much more military power China would need to tip the balance in its favor), but I'm interested in any hard analysis that you can share on the subject. The general reading I've seen has suggested that they would be able to do so in the next 10-20 years if current trends in military growth pan out.
That sounds like saber rattling to me. Trying to scare diplomats with talk of armageddon to secure a better bargaining position. It's a constant of international politics and one shouldn't read too much into it. The same is true of North Korea talking about turning Seoul into a crater whenever they need to ask for food aid.
> China has said that they believe that, in the event of hostilities over Taiwan, they will be obligated to strike US forces everywhere in the region -- and the US Navy still has a strong presence in Japan. Also S. Korea and the Philippines.
This would be starting World War III. It would be akin to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, with the main difference being, we have thousands of nukes and China does not. This course of action is so profoundly stupid that I cannot imagine China taking it.
If China attempts an invasion on Taiwan it is not unrealistic to suggest they’ll also take a swing at Japan and at least try to destroy the fabs there.
The United States has indicated that they would intervene, which means the only way to have a chance at a successful amphibious landing would be to conduct preemptive strikes against US bases in the region. To do so would be a direct declaration of war against the US and NATO, which, at current, China cannot hope to win.
I think China is out of there mind here. They either are A. willing to smash Taiwan to rubble and call it a victory or B. completely overestimate their chance of success.
I think China's real hope is that they can threaten their way to an advantageous position and take Taiwan without firing a bullet, but so far no one is blinking and the west is fed up with autocrats threatening warfare to get their way.
> The United States has indicated that they would intervene,
The US has made multiple unclear statements. What one president may say, another may walk back or reverse. Or the US might simply not do what they said, or adopt some face-saving half-measure.
Killing US troops stationed in Japan, OTOH, would force a very strong response; even if the government wanted to deescalate, the public wouldn't let them.
“Taking” Taiwan with abrupt military force cannot be decoupled from a war with the entire west all at once. At least US, UK, SK, AUS, and others (unsure about EU involvement).
If they agree to stay the fuck out of Japan and focus solely on Taiwan, NATO will stay put to avoid WW3. Plus, South Korea, Japan, have treaties with the US, which will lead the US to intervene if either of these countries gets attacked. China might not want to officially give NATO a reason to start WW3.
What a childish and naive take. I'll be blunt and assert its pretty dumb.
Firstly, completely dismissing Japan as a sovereign state. Complete disrespect.
Secondly, nuclear warfare is the dumbest solution possible. Who ever fires first must accept potentially losing the trust of all nations. No matter who fires for whatever reason. Barring an alien attack or something of that magnitide.
Thirdly, the US power does not come from its military - but diplomacy. Allies in strategic places captured by the flow of capital. The military maintains the status quo but isn't invincible. If it were, Russia would not exist. China would not become a superpower.
You seem to ignore other basics, such as the military alliance agreements currently in place. These agreements are actually enacted in law and backed by the presence of thousands of American troops in Japanese territory, and in billions of dollars of yearly payment from Japan to the USA for this alliance.
Having a critical view of the world is a great thing, and I can only commend you for that. But you need to look into the facts first.
Ah. I would think military alliances based on economic alliances are self-evident.
In the case of Japan and South Korea, those are not sovereign states but protectorates of the US. At least because they were occupied by the US post WWII and limited military autonomy because of US directives.
My point being the US is an imperial state masquarading as a cheerleader of democracy. The only reason no one says anything is because the US has the biggest stick in the room and anyone refusing to bend over to be shafted is public enemy number 1 ie. China, Russia and the levant.
Its surprising how weak Europe is considering how much experience they have in warfare but it is what it is.
China is a nuclear power and neither the US nor China is interested in MAD. Any attacks on Japanese territory would probably lead to a hot war with the US, but almost certainly not nuclear annihilation.
It absolutely does not. Taiwan was never under any sort of agreement, and the USA has always been ambiguous about its policy towards Taiwan.
This is completely different from the mutual defense agreement that Japan has with the USA, where it has been made very clear that the USA will protect Japan.
I understand you want to have a critical opinion, but you need to look at the facts.
In particular, Japan has the economic and technological might to have been able to make nukes decades ago. They didn't because they received a promise from the US that if anyone nuked them, the US would retaliate with its nukes. In exchange, Japan promised it would not make nukes (and probably also promised to consult with the US on Japanese national security matters). This deal came about because both Japan and the US see the value in keeping the number of countries with nukes low.
It's possible for China to attack fabs in Japan but China attacking Japan is a WW3 level escalation without a doubt. Invading Taiwan may or may not be.
Japan is very able to defend itself against China and the Chinese know that. That doesn't mean the Japanese would win a war with China, but who knows? Who would think Ukraine could take on Russia? If China seriously went to war with the US and Japan China could be blockaded.
The history of the last fifty years suggest the Chinese are pretty measured in their use of force. I'm sure they would try to capture Taiwan if they were confident they could with acceptable losses. But they realize time is on their side and they are not crazy gamblers like Putin.
As important as TW is to rejuvenation narrative, it's ultimately the consolation prize versus dismantling US east asian security architecture and securing regional+ hegemony. That's the grand finale battle for the lightcone of future PRC security/prosperity.
>Japan is very able to defend
Japan (and SKR, and TW, and even PH) like most US allies in island chain are are heavily dependant on energy and calorie imports. They can defend themselves against invasion, but they can't defend against PRC turning them into Yemen by wrecking critical infra (cut internet cables, destroy power nodes, mine ports etc). Stuff that make them non viable as a modern economy/society. The flip side of trying to contain PRC during peace is if they try to contain PRC during war, they're stuck in the island chain with a much more autarkic PRC who can spoil region indefinitely. And because US has security commitments, it maybe in PRC interest to draw US to defend allies where PRC forces balance is strongest.
I also think while CCP obviously prefers low cost reuninfication (even if armed), I personally would not be surprised if things escalate much broader because there are larger (and worthwhile) goals / targets. If Australia is going to contribute to even supporting US efforts in TW scenario, then destroying US military infra in AU (Pinegap, Geraldton, Exmouth) will cripple US Indo Pac operation. If anything, there may come a point of favourable future PRC power balance mixed with levels of percieved US antagonism where PRC will be eager for excuses to eliminate US regional/global military infra.
The issue is in such a war China is also cut off. A major point of their south china sea claims is to ensure that there is no peaceful way to block oil (and other products) being delivered to Chinese ports. In an attack on Japan (that doesn't turn into MAD) China also loses this supply chain and becomes reliant on Russia for energy imports and the infratructure for that reliance isn't in place yet and is also a major weakness.
PRC is essentially calorically food secure (with huge waste / room to optimize), has large energy reserves, and unlike island nations, massive domestic raw resource supplies. PRC is NOT Japan during WW2. Hence PRC is much more autarkic and can drag on war economy, perhaps indefinitely. Sure people will eat less meat and depend more on EVs (maybe even cope on bikes) during transition, but when shit hits fan, PRC + RU (is a powerful self sufficient land bloc with much greater long term war making potential than US partners trapped on vunerable islands. It's about asymmetric vunerability.
>The issue is in such a war China is also cut off
The Malacca dilemma was based on assumption that US had unilateral power to blockade PRC imports with impunity due to being domestically energy secure - it was an argument/strategy also based on asymmetric vunerability.
But that's increasingly not true, the TLDR is PRC rocket force likely already has capability or will in short term to _conventionally_ strike major US energy infra... US is existentially dependant on ~150 refineries - they are as dependant on these refineries as PRC is on maritime energy shipping. People conflate resource security as having more resources in your soil but it's really about the ability to protect the critical extraction/delivery infra. Otherwise Saudi wouldn't bribe US for security. Obviously conventional CONUS strikes is also a prelude to MAD, but it is also an equation for PRC establishing mutual vunerability with US, which greatly constrains US actions. Not to mention such capability also functionally dismantles US naval supremacy via port strikes (both capital and support assets) that underpins US global power projection.
My feeling is that the chance of US blockading PRC when she becomes as (conventionally) vunerable as PRC is increasingly remote. It's hard to understate how much geostrategic calculations must change once a relatively autarkic industrial power as massive as PRC is able credibly bring actual war to US homefront. It will be first time in modern history where conventional fires can penetrate CONUS to meaningfully degrade US society. US will have to assess whether it wants to fight a possibly existential war (possibly at best a pyrrhic one where she might not uphold her hegemony after) or abandon East Asia where PRC preponderance is increasingly difficult to match or deter, especially with respect to TW.
It is very unlikely, if not impossible: China has repeatedly stated Taiwan is in China, Taiwan has repeatedly stated they, in fact, are the legitimate China, both prepare day and night for an invasion they never dismiss, and both are a direct threat to each other politically, geographically and culturally.
Japan ? They're as threatened by China as India, and nobody in China is planning for administrative take over of 130 millions Japanese anytime soon. And Japan has so many problems to solve already, they're not looking at bothering China enough to risk missiles.
> I'm confused by this take. Who is threatening Japan with cruise missiles? Certainly not China or Russia. North Korea, perhaps.
Countries that have actively threatened Japan with nuclear bombs: China, Russia, North Korea, and the US (which literally dropped a bomb but have yet to make threats since).
> because you know damn well WWII is irrelevant to the question of current threats.
Well that was a sarcastic joke at the end. The US has not made any threats to Japan since after the bombing. The other countries listed are a different story though.
Russia: I think you have forgotten that the Kuril Islands are still contested territory between Japan and Russia. Russia's same policy is there that they will retaliate if their territories are "attacked." The exact same line with Ukraine. Putin has suggested he would take out Japan and (South) Korea quickly as they are the US's main launching points of an attack. Getting them out of the war quickly gives Russia a serious advantage and the US a serious disadvantage. This is ongoing and has been in discussion since the Cold War. Policies have not shifted on this. Russia has actively been violating international nuclear armament treaties and this has been big news since 2014. So, current.
China: Has been much more explicit and aggressive, stating that they will nuke Japan until they unconditionally surrender if they even send a single troop to defend Taiwan[1]. This video is 2021. They have also made similar threats to Australia after a deal with the US for nuclear powered subs (which would not have nuclear weapons) saying that any nuclear nation is not immune from nuclear attack.
North Korea: idk, last week when they launched their test missile directly over Japan?
I get that searching with respect to Russia might be difficult right now because everything is focused on Ukraine and Google overfits search results. But this has been in military discussion for decades. Maybe it is just saber rattling, but these are still things that have been said.
All this talk of China invading Taiwan and attacking other countries in SE Asia is bonkers. Their economy would be cut off from the rest of the world in an instant. Their commercial fishing fleets would probably be driven back to port.
It would take a matter of days until they had massive internal protests. Hungry people topple governments in hours.
> Their economy would be cut off from the rest of the world in an instant.
I think you misunderstand deeply the current equilibrium in the world.
Most of Africa, a significant part of South East Asia, some countries in Eastern Europe would definitely align with China. A significant part of South America would be neutral.
The USA is losing allies nearly as fast as China is making them.
Yet, it is EXACTLY what Xi repeatedly said in his new-term-inauguration speech
The dictator of China has effectively declared, as publicly as possible, and very specifically, that he intends to invade Taiwan if it does not willingly abandon it's democracy and come under China's rule
He obviously thinks he can get away with doing so without consequences, including those you suggest.
Yet, leaders make such mistakes all the time. Putin just made one on 24-Feb-2022.
It is up to the western world to ensure that Xi sees that such an action would result in bad consequences for him, and deter him from his stated course.
But the fact that it is bonkers is no assurance whatsoever that it won't happen.
Except, PRC "Final Warnings" has preluded actual war or near actual war with every NPT nuclear state, a few times when PRC wasn't (or not meaningfully) a nuclear power herself, on issues much less important than TW, when PRC was much more militarily weak than it is now. This includes USSR skirmishes (hence why the Soviet meme is stupid), US+UN in Korea, threatening UK over HK handover, secretly shelling French in Vietnam, multiple TW strait crisis. To add insult to injury, with respect to source of this meme, PRC "final warnings" throughout this period shot down 5 U2s, that's 3 more than USSR. So not only was PRC following up with warnings, but they managed to do so more successfully than USSR.
That's great — China issued over 900 "Final Warnings" about US military presence in the Taiwan Straits, and zero of them had any follow-through.
That gives us good reason to hope that China will keep behaving that way. We can keep up the deterrence, China can keep on blustering, and nothing bad actually happens. That would indeed be a great result.
The same was said about the impact of sanctions on Russia -- the people would revolt. Well, it's been almost a year and they haven't, at least not at levels that the state can't easily suppress.
China can get much further than Russia can in that amount of time.
If China and the United States are in a full-on shooting war, the last thing I'm going to be worried about is what country 5nm chip fabs are based in. It's a complete and utter failure state of civilization, and is one hot-headed decision away from going nuclear.
If chip fabs are at the top list of your worries, your perspective of war is probably overly informed by being on the side that undertakes imperial adventures against people who can't shoot back. Direct war against an actual superpower is horrific.
The western world would not be compelled to engage militarily over Taiwan. We'd only need to provide money and weapons to Taiwan (rank #21 military in the world) to hold off China (#3) indefinitely given the fact that Taiwan is incredibly difficult to invade due to the barrier the mountain ridges form around it and the narrow straight leading to it for a sea attack. It's a natural fortress. Look at the ongoing failure of Russia (#2) in Ukraine (#22) despite not having difficult land to traverse in their invasion and having a greater advantage in military power by comparison.
Whoever ends up controlling Taiwan will have a lot of destroyed factories on their hands. Losing 90% of advanced integrated processor output is world changing by itself. Besides the fact that military analysis done by us news spectators is a vain exercise.
Why? PRC will be operating in TW EEZ which it considers Chinese waters anyway. What is Japan going to do except watch helplessly from Yonaguni.
Practically, PRC can simply mine TW ports, crater run ways, via glide mines and MLRS all within PRC borders (that can hit anywhere in TW + adjacent). US + co doesn't remotely have the demining, sealift or airlift capacity to logistically support TW off PRC waters. Nor will they convince any commercial fleet/insurers to go on suicide mission of... invading One China territory. It's like how Operation Starvation crippled JP during WW2. Except TW is much smaller than JP and PRC is a much larger industrial power than US during wartime. PRC can unilaterally and trivially render TW inaccessible - it can blockade TW with basically zero sustained naval or air effort.
And really if US/JP try to run the blockade they're legally invading Chinese sovereign territory and it's WW3 anyway. TW may have chance to survive a PLA invasion, but IMO no chance of breaking a PRC blockade. Folks are grossly underestimating the proponderous of advantages PRC has near her coast.
Why nuke? Why assume that China cannot achieve military success using conventional means?
Observe that "the world" will not be helping Taiwan. India won't. Russia won't. Brazil won't. Nigeria won't. Pakistan won't. Bangladesh won't. Nigeria won't. You get the drill. US will, and probably Europe too, but why assume that these will 1) be able to defeat China in a conventional war in its own back yard, and 2) will even try to do so?
Good point, it would not be the world. In short, the free countries of the world will come together to protect a democracy from tyranny. Yes, this is imperfect, lots of small countries were not protected, we protect the "good ones" which is unfairly decided.
The democratic countries will come together, the same ones that helped Ukraine; delete from that list authoritarian (democratic or not) countries, and democracies that are led by authoritarian dictator wanna-bes (so if Trump comes back he'd be conflicted, because he loves authoritarian power, but indicated his displeasure with China). Probably not Hungry. Russia doesn't matter if they aren't nuking you. India, there is the authoritarian bent the country it is on - non Hindu people aren't feeling so happy about their country. I'd think India will feel torn because they want to fight Pakistan freely but don't want to increase the power of China. Brazil is another partially fallen democratic country, wonder how that vote will turn out at the end of Oct.
There are two reasons those countries will help Taiwan - because they don't want authoritarian dictators to take over democracies, and because Ukraine reminded us all of the importance of stopping dictators - we can't wait for them to decide they have enough. It's over 80 years since the last time the world went through it, German and Japan were the original threats (with Italy and a few others), now it's China and Russia. The chip making part of Taiwan will all be decimated in the first few hours of a war (you thought that would be one of my reasons to intervene ;-)). It will be re-created bit after bombing it and damage and just losing power it will be hugely weakened, hurting both sides.
Ukraine showed how much more powerful the militaries of the western alliances are. I'm sure China will not be so weak and kleptocratically weakened as Russia was, but they haven't been in battles recently so they will need some ramping up to really organize. I'm sure China will be able to do major damage to navys trying to operate around Taiwan, sink a few us carriers. But the US and the other western countries are about a lot more and they can operate in countries around there.
China is a powerful country, they have brilliant engineers and scientists and that economy and a vast population. They are not to be under-estimated. The world must move forward to promote democracy and stop dictators.
So you agree that China at least has a good chance of winning this war conventionally, and will not have to “immediately use the "do what we say or we'll nuke you"” nuclear threat? That’s my point here, I am not really interested in discussing moralistic platitudes as to how “free” and “democratic” just happen to exactly coincide with the countries of the western alliance.
Sure, there's always a chance, and China's chance is better than Russia's. There's a chance the other great power authoritarian country with a lack of freedom, Russia, could beat Ukraine, even without using nukes.
When people don't like to discuss what they call platitudes is because they will not benefit. The US has endless problems, with 400+ years of racism, slavery, denial of institutional racism, then our destruction and the big lie about Iraq, and finally Afghanistan had a different situation but still managed to screw that up. My friend who recently moved back to Taiwan to retire will probably also have an interesting viewpoint on such things. "Please don't kill me, China" might describe his views. He thinks (hopes?) there won't be a war because the west will help protect Taiwan.
Edit - the us has a lot more years than 200 of racism, updated that comment.
I hope the US is ready to go with orbital kinetic energy weapons. Ten thousand or so projectiles, each made of 50 kilograms of tungsten, raining down at multiple kilometers per second, would likely...suppress...any attempted blockade.
"Star wars" is feasible with reusable launch to orbit vehicles.
Taiwan does have fairly good stocks of weapons and ammo. It's also great terrain for fighting a defensive guerilla war. It'd be China's roleplay of "Russia in Afghanistan".
You’re missing the point, which is that we very much did not arm Ukraine ahead of time, just like we are not arming Taiwan right now in required volumes. China could literally blockade Taiwan tomorrow, and our arms are simply not there. What you propose depends very much on getting enough intelligence to ship all the arms they need before the blockade actually starts, and China not blockading Taiwan as soon as it learns about shipments leaving our ports.
The company that makes the machines that TSMC use to make chips is Dutch if I remember correctly. So if Taiwan gets invaded it is a disaster but not an absolute disaster as presumably USA/other countries could order some machines from said company and start afresh. Supply would be constrained for a long period of time and there would be a massive economic hit but it wouldn’t necessarily have to lead to WW3. If Russia is anything to go by, presumably there will be indicators in the months before as to when an attack is going to happen which means TSMC staff could be evacuated to other countries to get things up and running. I think I also read somewhere that USA was already in the process of setting up more chip fabrication on US soil in conjunction with TSMC, I think maybe in Texas if I remember right?
I think I also read that the entire foundry would be rigged to blow in the case of invasion. Between controlled demolitions such as these by Taiwan and whatever China has to fire at them to successfully win, there would be very little of value left standing on the island by the end of it. It would take them decades to redevelop it. Very hollow victory for China.
I think you underestimate the dependency of all modern economy on semiconductor industry.
I honestly think there is 100% chance that if China invaded Taiwan today, the US would declare war and send troops to defend Taiwan. In contrast, I think there is >0% chance that the US would not declare war on Russia if they did a (tactical) nuclear attack in Ukraine.
I wish I could remember the origin of this. But a quip on this idea I had read was along the lines of "If China invaded Taiwan and Kansas, the US would send troops to Taiwan first". Whether you want to call Taiwan an ally, a protectorate, vassal or whatever your political standpoint would dictate, the US is very protective of Taiwan.
But you underestimate our ability to downsize, turn around and build them locally on a 5-year horizon, and our ability to backtrack tensions anyway if we re reaching a nuclear point.
We will give Ukraine to Russia if we can save Paris.
> We will give Ukraine to Russia if we can save Paris.
Only that you just taught the already aggressive ruling elite of a huge country with an abundance of resources who don't care about anyone including their own except that they need them for work and for the fighting that threatening use of nukes gets them anything they want. Moldova next - it's not EU or NATO, already very low risk for Russia, if they can get there. Which was (is) a stated goal for the current war, to get the entire south of Ukraine to take away their sea ports and to get to Moldova.
They'll try the Baltic states next. Not a full invasion, just lots of little aggressive actions. Even previously they did murders in the EU, financing of radical parties out to undermine current EU country governments, supported by propaganda. I don't know how much it actually influenced US elections, but I think it's save to say they at least tried.
Giving them Ukraine will be massive. They will also have lots more of the oil and gas reserves under Ukraine and around the Krim. They will also get tens of millions of new citizens, lessening the problems of a shrinking number of people available inside Russia significantly. There also are significant parts of former USSR production in Ukraine, which will all go to Russia. They will also own even more of the prime agricultural lands of Eastern Europe, which at least so far seems to suffer less than Western Europe (look at the heat maps of this summer) under climate change so it may become even more valuable than it already is. The land is some prime real estate - unlike Siberia, Ukraine is much better, you can't look at the map and think "it does not add all that much to Russia" because the value of Ukraine lands is much higher.
I have no idea how you get this idea. Giving up Ukraine is really, really massive in its long term consequences, greatly strengthening Russia directly as well as showing them that the means they use actually work. This would be a gigantic loss for the West.
This is a good comment, but rather than tens of millions of new citizens, they would get tens of millions of new insurgents. Nearly the whole population of Ukraine is involved in the war effort in some way, and it would be impossible to break this completely. The only thing that could be given to Russia with the conquest of Ukraine is the option to turn into Afghanistan instead of North Korea.
> they would get tens of millions of new insurgents.
I doubt it. Most people will be passive and will just live their lives. They will get a few for sure, but they won't be able to do all that much. It's not like the ruling elite cares if there's an occasional killing, after all, they already use that method themselves, see the list of Russian businessmen and manager deaths.
Not everyone would be involved in directly fighting, but there are intelligence networks, supply networks, opportunities for discreet sabotage and falsifying critical data, and many other ways that people can support a resistance movement that would continue even in a fully occupied Ukraine.
In 1922 Russians have won the war against Ukrainian People's Republic.
After 20 years, vast majority of Ukrainians who opposed the occupation were dead, scared to death, refugees in other countries, or in forced labor camps in Siberia and other remote places of USSR.
This is a terrible truth, but the situation has changed in this war because everyone is contributing in organized volunteer centers. The amount of coordination is orders of magnitude greater than was possible a hundred years ago. I don’t think such a large society has ever been so fully engaged in a single purpose in history. Because the strategy is so new, it would be a mistake to assume that old tactics will work against it in the same way they have in the past. Nothing is guaranteed, but I wouldn’t bet against the Ukrainian people even in the worst circumstances.
I think there is little chance Russia could successfully occupy and hold Ukraine. Look at the US's utter failure to do the same in Afghanistan, despite vastly more resources and some significant popular support.
No you massively overestimate the importance of economics or semiconductor industry. Whatever will happen to Taiwan has nothing to do with Chips.
For China it's about nationalism, for US it's about protecting allies/upholding treaties and protecting democracy from the strongest authoritarian regime. Chips are not important. After all chances are high they might be destroyed even in a successful defense of Taiwan.
As a Ukranian American I wish we had and were doing more for Ukraine but it's not about chips or economics. Ukraine had only recently grown closer to the US. The US has promised to defend Taiwan for a long time (well sort of, arguably the US does keep some strategic ambiguity about this which might let it wiggle out)
I don't know where you got the idea that the US will not go to war to protect the US economy, national security, or military capacity, but you are severely misunderstanding the situation. That is why the military exists. We spend the amount we do on the military to support American economic dominance and define the rules on how world trade happens. The reason we are not doing more for Ukraine is because they are not very important to the US, outside of being a buffer against Russia.
Ideas like "protecting democracy" are used to sell citizens on wars they don't care about. The full destruction of TSMC is likely preferred over a Chinese dictated world technological economy. The truth is, if one side has TSMC chips and the other doesn't, what we're talking about may necessitate a total war.
You're overestimating the value of semiconductor industry in this hypothetical.
TSMC chips aren't critical, considering that ASML can also deliver the same equipment to US... and cut off China from their equipment. (or sabotage in critical cases)
There's a myriad reasons, why US would probably would send in military to protect Taiwan. But it's not going to be "just because TSMC"
The US is really not _that_ interested in protecting democracy from authoritarian regimes. If we were, we’d have boots on the ground in many African states.
While upholding treaties is vitally important, I think you’re underestimating the importance of chips(a rare occurrence on HN!).
Wars are generally fought over resources rather than ideas, and pretending that US is defending Taiwan to defend democracy instead of defending its strategic interests (access to vital resources — chips) is misguided.
> For China it's about nationalism, for US it's about protecting allies/upholding treaties and protecting democracy from the strongest authoritarian regime.
I doubt this is true for China (I very much suspect economic concerns trump any other concerns for them as well), but I am quite convinced you are wrong about the USA - one of the biggest supporters of non-democratic regimes in the world. There is little in US history to suggest they have any preference for a democratic regime over a subservient autocratic one. They are also extremely clearly uncaring of international treaties.
And make no mistake: the USA is coordinating Ukraine's defense because it sees it as a good chance to weaken Russia, not out of some deep care for the people of Ukraine.
It is not just about semiconductors. It is about pride. Taiwan shows another way for China that is not the PRC just as Hong Kong did. Taiwan is not just a separatist state, it is a successful separatist state. The better Taiwan does the worse the PRC looks. Semiconductors are just another gut punch. Why can't mainland China do what tiny Taiwan has done?
If Taiwan is taken off the board for semiconductors, or if all semiconductors have to go through China, that means the entire US military (and all western militaries) are dependent on a geopolitical rival. To allow that would be nothing short of giving away the game.
This is what I don't get. I thought military and aerospace used decades old cpu designs on decades old fab technology for the radiation hardness? Not saying they couldn't benefit from an upgrade, but it's not like Lockheed is putting Nvidia GPUs in fighter jets, right? It doesn't seem like a deal breaker to use a 14nm node compared to a '5nm' node (or whatever is the latest TSMC process). Seems like a weird line to draw in the sand to me. Frankly, seems like the only applications which are make or break on EUV lithography are all gaming related. Am I that off base here? Certainly prices would rise, and critical supply chains would have to be remade, and there would be no more iPhones, but seems like we'd get by just fine for a few years before catching back up and then likely surpassing Taiwan. And it's not like the real brains behind TSMC would willingly help a Chinese controlled takeover, and add on a new layer of corruption and bureaucracy, and in a few years TSMC is irrelevant anyways. And don't forget, TSMC is reliant on ASML, who certainly wouldn't be shipping any more EUV lithography equipment to a Chinese controlled Taiwan.
I think that's true for some key components of the military, but for example, anything involving AI systems necessitate cutting edge chips. You can probably look to the effect chip shortages had on car manufacturers to see how much of this likely works. Cars manufacturing wasn't entirely halted in most cases, instead they had downgraded functionality. Less automatic windows, more window cranks. The totality of every military system isn't based off high end chips, but some of it certainly is.
There are advanced Fabs in Israel, Intel and TSMC are both building next gen Fabs in Arizona. It's not like Twain is the only place with advanced chip fabs(though yes the vast majority of the capacity is there and IIRC thats where their latest process nodes are but I don't think the military is dependent on those absolute cutting edge process nodes)
Taiwan is also the center of a lot of specialist equipment (not the big swiss-watch ASML machines, but stuff like wafer transports, cleanroom gear, etc.) and consumables (chemicals, bunny suits, etc.). I don't know how extensive and fragile that ecosystem is but I live in eastern Michigan and it seems like every small to midsize town has some tiny automotive supplier that is somehow still in business even while the big plants have moved on. I suspect this is largely because they have no competitors and it is specialist work that doesn't really scale (meaning there is only so much of this work to go around, even if global auto sales 10x) so no one is really motivated to compete either. The result is that the GM and Ford plants leave the country, but still rely on a relatively small set of expertise and tooling that only exist in the rust belt. Presumably, a thorough nuking of the Midwest would (in addition to lots of other unpleasant effects, like the death and famine millions, perhaps billions) at least require the pause of the majority of auto manufacturing around the globe. Assuming people still wanted cars after such an event, it could be recovered, but it would take time.
I got a little carried away with the Michigan analogy, but IMO it doesn't go far enough: Taiwan is far more integral to the global semiconductor industry than Detroit is to the global auto industry.
I agree that this isn't an indefinite problem, but the current state of affairs is that TSMC is irreplaceable on the world's fabrication scene. The military definitely has some need for cutting edge process nodes, though I can't say how much. This is intentionally vague, but it seems safe to say there are a number of high end missile guidance systems, a variety of AI implementations, and drone systems that likely all have some dependence on high end chips. Not to mention the economic reliance on TSMC, Apple alone is ~7% of the S&P500.
I think if we fast forward 5-10 years, Taiwan will not be this much of an absolute, but it will take years for these new fabs to come online. Until there are viable alternatives, Taiwan is a massive risk.
Semiconductors alone aren't even remotely enough. We have enough supply to wait out and build out other semiconductor fabs, to go to WW3 just over TSMC.
Our dedication to protect our ally Taiwan has nothing to do with Silicone and neither does China's nationalist obsession over it. If it comes to war, chips will play no role
While we can likely all agree "Silicone" is not the issue, silicon chips is undoubtedly an important variable. The Taiwanese government agrees too, and does think chips will play a role:
"Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, told one group that she saw the island’s tech prowess as a means of shoring up support for its democracy. Calling economic security a “pillar” of national security, she said Taiwan was willing to work with partners to build sustainable supply chains for what she called “democracy chips.”
The latest electronic gadget is NOT what it is about
It is whether the democracies of the world will abandon democracy and allow dictators to take over their societies by threat of force or force.
If we are not both better armed, better prepared, and willing to fight, we might as well hand over the key to Putin, Xi, and Un, and live under their dictatorships.
If we want freedom, we must risk war, and if the threat is nuclear war, then that most of all must be faced down. There is a reason we don't negotiate with terrorists or blackmailers — because if we negotiate and let them gain from terrorism or blackmail, we get a short period of peace before they try it again, along with every other wannabe dictator who can get their hands on some weapons. This all applies even more strongly with nukes.
Despite being close to China as the crow flies, the geopolitical difference between Japan and Taiwan means they could be on opposite sides of the globe.
"On entire other sides of the globe" is a pretty strong statement. Japan is a vassal state of the US and Taiwan's independence from China relies wholly on US support. Chinese citizens (at least the ones I questioned) have no love for Japanese. There are even talks of a Pacific NATO between Vietnam, Korea, Japan, and the Phillipines, with Taiwan being the clear Ukraine parallel. South Korea is probably politically like Germany (primarily self interested), Japan is probably politically like the UK (sees the bigger picture).
Japan is by no means a Vassal states. It has the third largest GDP in the world, and is a major player in its own right, although you are correct in asserting that it is militarily comparable with far less wealthy nations.
Japan's constitution prohibits a traditional military as a result of surrender in WW2. Not having the right to solve your own disputes sounds like vassalization to me. From a face saving perspective "powerful ally country" is probably the status of every vassal state. From a de facto perspective they are not allowed to solve their own disputes and house military bases of a country that solves disputes (with the threat of violence) on their behalf.
The difference between ally and vassal seems like one of alignment. Right now Japan and the US are quite aligned, but were alignment different, I think the status would be as well.
Vassals are required to pay tribute financially or (more importantly) militarily. Look at Belarus for an example of what that looks like (and the kind of foot-dragging you get when the vassal is unwilling).
Japan doesn't get involved in aggressive wars, but neither does e.g. Switzerland, and no-one would call them a vassal for it. Yes that restriction is currently constitutional in Japan, but Japan is free to amend that constitution without needing US approval.
Japan is free to change their constitution at any time. AFAIK they are no longer bound by WWII-era treaties with the US. (Can anyone confirm/refute that? Google fails me.)
Japan at least have recently changed a few laws to increase their military forces. Japan is a free country and they could change treaties if they wanted. We are just better off working together. I wonder what would have happened if say China & Russia didn't exist. Then there's be no one to threaten Japan, make them want to be a buddy of the US.
As far as I'm aware the US has treaty obligations with Japan which would require a full military intervention should Japan be attacked. Building a Fab in Japan is effectively a hedge against everything except a world war.
China is not dumb enough to assault Japan, and if they blow up Japanese fabs they know that will be the end of China as we once knew it. Don’t give the US a reason to retaliate hard.
They might rattle their sabers but these fabs will be safe.
The other day we were discussing Pablo Azar, "Computer Saturation and
the Productivity Slowdown" (Federal Reserve Bank of New York Liberty
Street Economics, October 6, 2022) [1]
Simply reinventing systems and deliberately obsoleting stuff to create
fake demand is over. The metaverse isn't hoing to happen. People are
fatigued with tech.
We're entering a different era in which we need to make better, more
humane and effective technology, not just more and more and more of
it.
I disagree. We've already passed the tipping point for tech, and investment will continue to accelerate. This is true for various form of artificial intelligence, and the rest of tech.
Businesses in general started to see the appeal around the time that the Google Assistant, Cortana, Alexa and Siri started to become actually useful and desired by the general public. Because of that, there will continue to be a push to extend and enhance those capabilities.
The current systems can turn a normally worded question into a web search, and present the results in a pleasing manner. The next step is to extend the ability of the systems to actually understand wider and wider ranges of questions. We are still a ways away from having free-flowing conversations with our computers, but there are many steps along the way that are useful of themselves. Advancing this technology is a competitive advantage, and becomes key to drawing in and keeping people in one of the various tech ecosystems (Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple).
In the wider business world, people are finding new and better ways to apply this technology.
I disagree current systems can turn a web search that presents results in a pleasing manner. I had a horrible time trying to find a specific musician's work on YouTube just last night. It kept recommending me completely unrelated vids as if I was browsing just to browse. It couldn't seem to comprehend that even though I usually watch cute cat videos today I am searching for music, even when I was exact quoting the author's name.
I think technology has shifted from giving me what I want to telling me what I want. I really dislike it.
I think a part of this problem is just simply a matter of scale. As more and more information gets generated and stored on the internet, finding the information you exactly need in 3-5 words typed into a search engine at some point just ceases to become probable or even possible. So search engines have to predict what you want based upon the limited information you give it (and does this using others things such as how often something is visited, search patterns, trends, and/or related promotions), and you end up perceiving it as it telling you what you want.
Sadly giving a search engine too many words can stop it from even searching, probably because that would cause a scan or result in a very time and computer/resource intensive search. So it doesn't even bother searching and tells you it couldn't find anything.
You answered yourself in the last sentence. Google's algorithm is designed to maximize their add return not to immediately return what you are searching for.
Imagine this use case. User searches for a video that costs Youtube royalty fees and is not monetized. Do you prioritize that in your return results or some other video that makes your business money instead of costing it?
Same thing with the Spotify Company playlists and recommendations versus user generated ones. Spotify's seems to include lesser quality, lower royalty songs now even though that is not what I want and it knows it. But unlike Google, I only go to Spotify BECAUSE of the quality of the songs it recommends me. Now that it's priority is first lower royalty songs over songs it things I would like the most I have no incentive to stay.
> The current systems can turn a normally worded question into a web search, and present the results in a pleasing manner.
Pleasing but not useful. I really miss Google search from 10 years ago. I think things started going downhill when they introduced the instant search feature.
Nowadays it's difficult to find anything. The results are mostly irrelevant and littered with spam and AI written nonsense.
I remember I could go through hundreds of result pages and find useful things on the tail end, now quite often I get one page only and nothing is relevant to my search term.
I have to often use quotation marks etc, but even that stops being helpful - basically more often than not I get no results at all.
Huge amounts of our current tech industry have yet to prove they can even make a profit. I'm pretty sure than in a few more months we'll find out they can't.
I work for a fairly large, fairly successful company and I'm having to explain to my team how to quantify the business value of a product, like showing that the value provided to customer in terms of dollars is greater than the cost of the service we provide. It's an uphill battle, because we've lived in a bubble so long people don't even remember this basic fundamental of business.
The tech industry exploded because of cheap money, but by and large has completely failed to extract actual value from the technology.
Even when I list out the "tech" products I do use frequently (Uber, Door Dash and the like) I realize that the products they offer are basically investor charity since they cannot be sustained indefinitely at the price point they're offered (and they don't make sense if they charge more).
Of the actual technology I use, the vast majority has barely changed in a decade. The most impressive thing I've purchased in years is finally getting an RTX 3070 and that is just "neat!". Anyone who remembers the release of the original iPhone will instantly recognize that despite the trillions spend in the tech industry, nothing quite as game changing as that has come out since. Google search was also better back then.
In terms of human existence tech is overwhelmingly above the average person need. It's not providing anything beside more addictive paths. You don't need more resolution, more bandwidth, more anything.. you probably need less, or more space to reflect and live outside the networked digital realm.
ps: to add a bit more, from the few chats I have, people are either saying "well I need that to check my bank account or pay taxes" or "well I need that so I can binge on netflix"
Fair point but there are a few factors: that tool is having a lot of side effects, it went from a mysterious side piece of your life to a central addictive plane. I can't think of any tech that backfired that much. Your computer is underutilized, and its capacity is often above its users intellectually. We never had tools of that kind before, and I'm not sure people will feel the need for more. I personally am completely off the market.
> People have been saying this about technology for as long as technology has
existed.
Have they? It kinda sounds "truthy" but if ever there was an
unfalsifiable claim that's gotta be a contender.
I'm no general historian but think for the most-part people have
enthused over and coveted technologies for thousands of years.
With the exception of occasional religious objections to "magic" it
was the Luddites during the industrial revolution whose first
stirrings of discontent emerged.
Even the early critical science-fiction of H.G Wells and Mary Shelley
was tepid and poetic.
Much later, in the late 1960s, comes the first modern tech-critique,
and much of that is driven by affairs relating to environmental and
war problems, Vietnam, oil crisis, DDT... way before the Internet.
The idea that we have a surfeit of technological capability, or perhaps
just too much of the wrong type, seems very contemporary to me.
> You don't need more resolution, more bandwidth, more anything.. you probably need less, or more space to reflect and live outside the networked digital realm.
Better tech is how humans (all of them - rather than the few) get more space to reflect and live outside.
As always, it is a question of degree. A young adult in the 70s had plenty of time to reflect and live outside. The technology of the preceding 50 years has not made this more accessible. If anything, the slot-machine nature of our computing reduces the likelihood of it.
> A young adult in the 70s had plenty of time to reflect and live outside.
A young adult "in an already developed country with relatively new infrastructure that had already been built for them and they chose not to continue to invest in and improve" in the 70s had plenty of time to reflect and live outside.
Meanwhile, because of those young adults lack of productivity in the 70s, people even in the US are drinking water with lead, have their homes destroyed by climate change, had the forests die and passively watched as desertification took hold.
That said, I don't blame those young adults individually, they were a product of poor societal leadership. While not in aggregate (as evident in today's "crumbling" US and European infrastructure and diminished infrastructural head-start), I'm also sure many of these individuals found a healthy balance between being outdoors relaxing and improving the human condition for the long run.
All I'm calling out is that in aggregate they were no bastions you should hold in any high regard, and definitely not something to try and replicate.
What we need is better technology to lift up the human condition, allow each of us to continue to help improve the human condition with roughly 40 hours per year of effort, and spend the rest outdoors/gaming/enjoying/relaxing in general.
Bookmarks and data filtering are intermediate technologies that help make more technologies (they are necessary, but useless in and of themselves). When I say better tech, I mean:
- Less human effort and overall cost to produce and store food.
- Less human effort and overall cost to grow, transport, and store food.
- Less human effort and overall cost to clean, transport, and store potable water.
- Less human effort and overall cost to keep everyone's bodies healthy.
- Less human effort and overall cost to keep everyone's minds healthy.
- Less human effort and overall cost to construct net-new housing (and frankly more generally "improve everyone's safety").
- Less human effort and overall cost to keep our planet healthy i.e. appropriately and continually terraformed for our needs.
- Less human effort and overall cost to travel/explore any and every inch of this planet (including the sea floor, the highest mountains, the sky, and even orbit). Fuck it, why think small, even less human effort and overall cost to travel/explore every inch of this universe.
These are the technologies we need to get more people outdoors!
Do you think these alternative cycles are always the same amplitude? or do you think maybe... we're at peak amplitude of that tech growth cycle that won't be seen again without another major breakthrough technology?
Or I guess we can just be pendantic. There are no such thing as alternating periods, all periods of time are exactly the same!
There absolutely is decline in tech, largely made by market demanded tradeoffs.
For example cell phones still sound worse than land lines did in the 90s. We just don't care, and don't have a choice anyway (even most landlines are ultimately going to interface with a digital connection).
Refrigerators have more gizmos than before, but one of the key features, reliability, is in decline.
Personal computers are increasing moving back to a client server model which is absolutely a step back from where we were a decade or more ago. When the services behind all the billion SaaS apps we consume disappear so will the tools themselves.
Market conditions have virtually eliminated software you own.
I suspect this trend will increase dramatically over the next decade where most of the devices and tools we use are objectively worse than what we're using today.
This is actually sort of a strawman. It relies on a definition for "tech" that's different from the English word "technology". You're talking about "peak {tech industry as defined by the last three decades of investment behavior}", and... OK, there's an argument there.
But to argue that technology as a whole has stopped is... well, not irrefutable, but almost certainly wrong. And if it's right, wow, is that bleak.
Constructed more naturally, your statement here:
> we need to make better, more humane and effective technology, not just more and more and more of it.
Is certainly true, but frankly is just a tautology. "Technology" as commonly understood means new stuff that makes people's lives better.
Yes, but you conflated the two to make your argument. Saying "peak tech is over" to mean "the VC-driven startup grider is out of gas" is fine! Saying that it's over because technology isn't making people's lives better is wrong, because that's what "technology" does, and it doesn't appear to be slowing down to me.
> Saying that it's over because technology isn't making people's lives
better is wrong, because that's what "technology" does, and it
doesn't appear to be slowing down to me.
I see two errors here.
Defining technology to be "that thing which makes people's lives
better" feels weak, even disingenuous, because trivially nuclear
missiles and weaponised smallpox are technologies that fail your test.
Therefore, there exist technologies that can make peoples' lives
worse.
The second issue is with your subjective "(people's lives getting
better) doesn't appear to be slowing down to me". It's a view you're
entitled to hold of course. Maybe you are not aware of other
perspectives. It may have escaped your notice that in the last decade
digital technologies have substantially changed in their
nature. They've been at the centre of scandals over the erosion of
democratic values, decline in education, attention disorders, social
fragmentation, childhood depression, pollution and e-waste, conflict
minerals, energy consumption, loss of privacy, dignity and
rights... Must I go on?
To hold the idea that "all technologies naturally improve human life"
by definition alone seems like a desperate escape from the facts.
> scandals over the erosion of democratic values, decline in education, attention disorders, social fragmentation, childhood depression, pollution and e-waste, conflict minerals, energy consumption, loss of privacy, dignity and rights... Must I go on?
Please don't. OK, I get it now. Your point above wasn't about "peak tech" at all[1], it was about this part, which you didn't mention. I think you're wrong, FWIW, but am not going to engage.
[1] In either the sense of "peak tech startup investment activity" or "technological progress as commonly undeerstood".
> In either the sense of "peak tech startup investment activity" or
"technological progress as commonly undeerstood".
"Peak tech" is two words I just pulled out of my arse an hour ago.
Let's define it together.
For me it's a palpable sentiment not a definition. But some people
here seem to "get it".
The "tech industry" is not just an activity, it's a culture. Many of
us, including (particularly?) developers are increasingly fed-up and
disappointed by the direction digital technology is going. Not because
we dislike technology, but because of what a minority are doing with
it to gain power and wealth to the detriment of everyone else.
I don't think things will change for those investors who are smart
enough to see the writing on the wall and switch (as they are doing)
to physical technologies. FWIW I love the startup mind-set.
But this cynical flogging of surveillance capitalism, screwing over
users, social control and smartphone bandwagon has been sticking in
people's throats way beyond this community for some time.
The pain and anxiety equals or outweighs the perceived benefits - not
just to a few geeks - but to people like my parents, siblings and
neighbours.
I rethought my reaction to Google IO conference: I found it boring because they showed things which do not have an impact on me.
Like 'taking better pictures when you a person of non white color's but that's the wrong attitude. They solve great issues like this and I'm probably more underwhelmed that we even had to fix something like this because it wasn't really solved before.
Let's see if/when we get a more stable timeframe back. With COVID and the Russians it's shitty and climate change might already be a regular constant.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments? You've been doing repeatedly, unfortunately. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for, so we have to ban such accounts.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments? You've been doing it a lot already, unfortunately. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for, so we have to ban such accounts.
We may need this, but the stakeholders holding the purse strings don't. And they are the ones who will decide what gets built.
It's how we end up with shit like grocery self-checkout machines and robots answering customer support calls. Nobody likes being yelled at by a robot who doesn't understand the situation, except the decision-makers buying the machines.
This isn't peak tech, not by a longshot. This is just Intel's competitors eating it's lunch.
Grocery self-checkout machines are great. There's even a system now where you can bring a little scanner with you and scan as you pick them out, that way you can bag them directly in your cart, saving the time of the final scan and the bagging (it was great during the peak of the pandemic, skip the cashier and waiting in the high-population line area).
Robots answering support calls are annoying, but self-service websites are pretty good for 99% of things.
No, they aren't. There's not a single point in time when I have ever scanned my own groceries faster than the guy who does it 8 hours a day.
They scream at me when they think I'm stealing (Any human being doing that would instantly be reprimanded by a manager), they have tiny platforms where I can't even fit my groceries and heaven forbid if I do something the machine doesn't like, an attendant needs to come unfuck it for me.
The best thing about them is that I can do some work for the store for free as part of my shopping. I can't wait for the next grocery innovation of having the customers stock the shelves from the backroom before they can fill a sack with onions.
I was a cashier for a couple summers. There were a couple members of staff that were really experienced experts who could really fly through the checkout, but there were plenty of us that were just kids working over the summer...
Supermarkets have always looked to save cost, it is a price sensitive business after all. At some point you'd give a list to the clerk and they'd put your order together. I'm sure people were annoyed when they had to start doing that clerk's job.
> I can't wait for the next grocery innovation of having the customers stock the shelves from the backroom before they can fill a sack with onions.
Think bolder. As a software engineer in the Soviet Union I had to spend about three weeks each year in the collective farm fields planting, tending and harvesting potatoes and cabbages. Since some of my American friends are very fond of socialism these days - these types of “improvement” look definitely a possibility.
You were a professional software engineer in the Soviet Union while still being a high school student? Or do you mean to say that you were one in the 1940s, when people were packed into train cars to bring in the harvest, among other things?
Something about this doesn't seem to entirely add up, given that workers in government and defense-critical industries weren't exactly rounded up a la carte to work the fields. Not when there was a dedicated class of kolhozniks that were paid next to nothing, and couldn't really leave the countryside for better jobs in the cities.
But now that you mention it, I would pay good money to see the likes of Peter Thiel spend a few weeks a year picking strawberries, or filling grocery bags, or piloting a shitbarge up the Hudson river along with the rest of us. I do keep hearing from that half of the political spectrum that hard, poorly paid work, and pulling yourself up by the bootstraps builds character...
>Something about this doesn't seem to entirely add up
I kinda think I should write an essay about the life of a software engineer in the Soviet Union. It is always interesting to get reactions of un-believe to simple truths, known to everybody with the same "living experience". What stops me - my English is bad and Russians know all this already. Still, let me do what I can.
So, software engineers and the food supply. I worked as a software engineer in a biological research center. I've participated in the practice described below from 1979 to 1991, 1991 being the last year of the planned economy. Each employee has a quota to be fulfilled in the collective farm fields, like 20 days a year. Each morning, weekends including, a big number of buses was coming to the city center. Our research institution was assigned one bus. We packed in it and were driven into the fields. There was a quota to be done by each until afternoon: planting, tending or harvesting depending on the season. In the afternoon like "before lunch" buses arrived to take us back to the city. You were free from work this day, but paid in full. You were also paid for the work done in the fields. Twice paid for a half of a day's work.
No one was exempt from the farm work quota, nor government workers, nor defense contractors from a county seat 20 miles away.
So the whole system was not especially cruel, but extremely ineffective, like the life in the late Soviet Union in general - do not forget these buses with their fuel, some of them bringing people from 20 miles away - for half a day's work.
( In 1990 yours truly organized and participated in an economic experiment, reducing some of the costs. Instead of giving a quota to each co-worker, we've organized a team of volunteers, spent whole days in the field and were done with the quota for the whole institution in a week or so. This was a back-breaking affair, but earned a good money. I've sent a letter to the county newspaper with a proud name Kommunist, describing the "experiment". They published it, but they also published "letters from workers" naming me "the enemy of the people". )
Some misconceptions to correct, if I may.
>in the 1940s, when people were packed into train cars to bring in the harvest
Incarceration rates in Stalin times were less than incarceration rates in present Texas or Luisiana. So not much could have been done using inmates labor only.
>dedicated class of kolhozniks that were paid next to nothing,
Kolhozniks in my time were paid 2-3 times more than a software engineer. Not that was much, but still.
>and couldn't really leave the countryside for better jobs in the cities.
This practice ended in 1965. Free movement of people was restricted in general though, meaning you have to jump through some stupid obstacles to move, but absolutely possible.
>I would pay good money to see the likes of Peter Thiel spend a few weeks a year picking strawberries
This is a strange wish. If Thiel is a good person, he will work along with you, yes. But if he is the bad guy like I guess you've implied - he will be a supervisor over you packing strawberries. Some things never change with a change of a political system.
Not saying that wasn't difficult, but that actually sounds pretty cool to me.
And not to be overly pedantic (although we are on hn here, and when in Rome...), but leading American socialist movements are focused on democratic socialism, much like many European countries where I'm pretty sure forced agrarian labor isn't a thing.
> leading American socialist movements are focused on democratic socialism
Is there possible anything democratic without free speech?
( Speaking of which. In the Soviet Union all western media - newspapers and magazines - was put under the lock. Foreign propaganda. Sounds familiar? Only trusted persons could get the key. Funny thing is all former Party media - newspapers and magazines from former years - were put under the same lock. Protocols of former Party congresses too. Dangerous, same as foreign propaganda. And now I see this:
YouTube demonetized a video showing years of audio and video clips, tweets, and headlines produced by the Party politicians at about and after 2016 - nothing else.
So we may be not there yet but we are sure sailing in the same direction ).
the scan as you shop technology is actually being phased out in many chains because the theft rates are unsustainable
some wholesale clubs apparently counter this by randomly auditing every cart as you leave, but that seems to leave the whole thing only marginally more efficient than traditional checkout
>We may need this, but the stakeholders holding the purse strings don't. And they are the ones who will decide what gets built.
It has never been easier to build a business(software). Labor is abundant, and the tech boom has created a million Medicis willing to throw money at wild things. Look at FTX fund for example.
On the contrary, I think the next decade will call for a revolution in physical technologies as opposed to the web-centric mentality of the past few decades.
My laptop is a 1000x the power of the one I had 15 years ago yet I am still stuck with the same hourglass due to shit, bloated and over-complex software stacks. Tell me I'm at peak tech when this is no longer the case.
There's no way this is true. You simply aren't accurately remembering the actual experience of using that laptop 15 years ago. For starters, the laptop 15 years ago was using a spinning rust hard disk, so everything was much slower compared to today's lightning fast SSD. I remember when it used to take minutes to boot up a laptop and launch a few applications, and it took almost that long to resume from hibernation. Modern laptops are much, much faster.
I think they are in agreement and retorting the gp who said we are at peak computing. Clearly we aren't if their programs are not launched instantly. Clearly there is room for improvement.
I'm with you. The previous sentiment is similar to 35mb of RAM is all you'll ever need. Instead computers are a "build it and they will come" paradigm. Hardware innovation happened in the US when it was cheap and accessible. Not it happens in Shenzhen, where it is cheap and accessible. Programming innovation accelerated when computers became cheap and accessible. I don't see us slowing down anytime soon because you can literally put a computer in anything, and people are trying. Cheaper and more powerful chips just means we can expand into more domains.
I have experienced a handful of magic products, Apple products which are the best example, that are built from incredibly capable software that takes cheap hardware components and makes them sing. All objects could be like this, deep software capabilities running on a few dollars of hardware. I have the idea that the demand for people that can create software is bottomless, that there will always be more thing to turn into perfect iThings.
tl:dr
Global recession => lower chip demand for consumers
China ban => lower demand from CCP
nvidia RTX 4090 still out of stock in most places :|
I'm pretty sure datacenter and military chip usage will grow in next few years even if recession hit consumer market even harder then past year then US chipmakers will get fat checks just 2be prepared for China retaliation (probably feels good to be Intel in chip war time).
>>nvidia RTX 4090 still out of stock in most places :|
I mean, I just don't think they made that many in the first place. Overclockers UK(one of the biggest online electronics stores in the UK) was very upfront with how many units they are getting from manufacturers, and they got like ~500 cards total for launch. That's nothing. So of course it's out of stock, even if only a very limited group of enthusiasts is actually interested in buying one.
> tl:dr Global recession => lower chip demand for consumers
Global recession is to blame for everything. I'm waiting for some years for payable video card, nothing special, but i guess Global recession is to blame. /s
Global recession for sure can be blamed for most thinks in EU right now, as we just have a lot less money to spend cause of energy prices, inflation and enormous number of refuges which make prices of basic goods even higher (In some places from 3 to even 10% [Poland] of all population living there are people from Ukraine). And Central Europe isn't prepare for that.
You're waiting for a "payable video card" after prices crashed to an all time low? There are 3090s getting dumped for <$800 now. Is a 50% drop not enough for you?
A few months ago, I posted that here that governments around the world should not interfere with the chip industry just because of the covid-induced shortages. The reason is that supply and demand will naturally sort things out and that any government handout to chip companies to increase capacity will be wasted because chip demand will swing the other way.
As far as I understand, the primary reason for these investments is not to address the shortages, but to decouple Western nations from their reliance on Taiwanese silicon. Most of the remaining shortages - which are still happening in many industries, eg. heat pump shortages in Europe are mostly blocked by chip supply - are caused by the production backlog of the older/cheaper/different technologies.
So the goal is political. The economy can take a hit to achieve it.
Well, the foundry business is now a two-horse race between Samsung and TSMC. Intel, many believe won't make it. The US gov't knows it too -- that's why Trump arm-twisted TSMC to open new plants in Arizona.
Samsung was making Apple's A's in Austin, Texas some time ago, but Apple ditched Samsung's US manufacturing in favor of their China/Taiwan-first offshore outsourcing strategy.
> Samsung was making Apple's A's in Austin, Texas some time ago, but Apple ditched Samsung's US manufacturing in favor of their China/Taiwan-first offshore outsourcing strategy.
Apple runs an Asia-first strategy these days, they are divesting from China at top speed (whether that's due to sanction threats, the risk of operating in dictatorships, raising wages in China or a combination of that is up for debate). It doesn't make much sense for Apple economically and logistically to use US-made products as they have to be shipped across the ocean to the assembly plants.
>> ... they are divesting from China at top speed...
I'm not entirely convinced that that's what Apple is doing.
The Information reported[1] last year that Apple made ginormouse investments ($270+B) in China's domestic tech industry to train their workforce and foster China's tech manufacturing. That was 6-7 years ago. It was also revealed very recently that Apple was still trying mighty hard to source more materials and chip suppliers from China's domestic tech industry (eg, YMTC) in spite of the on-going US sanctions on MIC chips -- in this particular case with YMTC, Apple finally gave up only after the Biden admin expanded export control on YMTC last week[2].
I don't think Apple is deterred by Xi's dictatorship, China's geopolitical threats to Taiwan/the South Sea conflict with other SEA countries, or the Uigher (and other ethnic minoority groups) human rights concerns, despite their virtue signaling here in the US. Sure, I think the justification for Biden's foreign/trade policies is up for debates, but what is quite clear is that Apple hasn't really changed its China/Taiwan-first business practices.
There’s gov intervention now, not due to shortage nor Covid related supply, but strategic moves that’s happening between US and China.
With China having “seized” Hong Kong, and Russia invading Ukraine, flags went up signaling that the next major move in the future could be China invading Taiwan. And Taiwan is where the most advanced chips are made.
In parallel news, playing with the open source AI models, it’s clear that GPUs are NEEDED in order to run these AI models. Ex: an Nvidia RTX3090 (low end of A100) can run Stable Diffusion in a couple minutes, while my 2013 MacBook Pro, cpu driven, takes ~4hrs to perform the same task.
AI models applied to military uses is a game changer, as demonstrated by Ukraine equipped with US tech.
Mitigating the risk of losing Taiwan, enabling production on US shore, and banning sales to China [1] would keep the economic and military advantage on the US side a bit longer than if things kept going the way they were.
Chips might slump now, but GPUs are gonna be in hot demand, even w/o the blockchain use cases. As demonstrated by the open source AI models, we’re about to replace a lot of stock photos, news illustrations, logo services… and that’s just the beginning.
Are you certain that AI is used in any of the tech that the US is sending to Ukraine?
It's mostly cold war era equipment, designed around the '90s or earlier. Modern AI also seems very failure-prone for military applications around populated areas.
None of those systems are autonomous, people still handle the decision-making. Also, AI does not mean faster or more advanced compute; the fact that it requires so many cycles and watts is a testament to its relative inefficiency.
Aerospace code is much too thoroughly-vetted to use something as slow and imprecise as a modern AI system. Existing realtime platforms and sensors are plenty fast, and you can prove that they'll work correctly. Plus, when you're procuring chips to run in an adverse environment, advanced process nodes will probably be too fragile and prone to interference.
I think it is fair for a government to promote such a key industry to diversify where it is based. Currently a crazy percentage of chips are made in one geographical location. A huge amount of the modern economy is reliant on having cheap and easy access to these chips. This isn't a supply/demand decision by governments, but a strategic risk decision. Having some domestic/local regional (think EU based) chip manufacturing is going to be like having steel or food production. A strategic decision.
I really don’t understand this. Chips are tangible goods, not services where, for example, a bunch of hospitality capacity went to waste during the pandemic. Any “extra” chips will go to use, and will only serve to reduce costs for firms and consumers purchasing them, expand the range of products it makes sense to put chips in and the speed and quality of chips companies can afford to build on. While market signals are the best way to determine these things in general, many of the reasons mentioned in the article - long spin-up times for production infrastructure, dependence on other countries with fraught geopolitical situations - are strong reasons to build reserve capacity, even setting aside the direct economic benefits.
Many chips are not fungible, at least not for large-volume orders that incorporate stuff like customer specific mask ROMs or optimizations, and certainly for built-to-order stuff like Apple's SoCs. That means that let's say Apple can't just go and take a bunch of NVIDIA's chips and slap them into their products, and I'd even take a bet and say that manufacturers of NVIDIA cards can't easily take up cancelled order capacity for the same NVIDIA chip from other manufacturers.
Yes, that’s a good point. But it seems to me like that’s a matter of degree, right? Like, even stipulating that the chips themselves are not fungible across products and companies, they are fungible across time for the same or similar products. The price of your 2023 fridge, for example, could be lower because of excess supply of chips for 2022 models, no? And am I right in thinking that even if the chips themselves are not fungible (and there is a genuine possibility that excess production of specific chips goes completely to waste), excess productive capacity is good in and of itself despite some amount of specialization?
No. Chips don’t really expire, and suppliers often have to wean their customers off them by raising the prices regularly once they’re done acquiring design wins.
If the chips went on sale every year then companies would gamble on additional stock at discount, driving revenue down, and further disrupting the sales transitions into new IC designs.
I saw this announcement being more guaranteeing US onshore chip fabs are being built as demand increase.
The rise of TSMC has somewhat increased the national security risk as the market share has shifted away from Intel. We are seeing with the Ukraine War, a reliable domestic supply of semiconductors is now critical to national security.
I expect Intel will continue to be helped along by the US government for some time.
The current slump seems purely caused by a demand drop. It will take years to see the capacity increase because of those government investments. By then, we will hopefully be out of this recession.
The chip manufacturing industry would have spent their own money building fabs based on demand projections. Government money (my tax money) does not need to interfere and give free money to them. This is my point.
I get your point, but it seems to ignore the geopolitics involved in something like the CHIPS act. Those government investments are not to save the poor struggling semi industry, it is a strategic move to limit overseas dependencies in a supply chain that is seen as critical for the MIC and the economy at large.
You are right that those semi companies do not need the government investments to build fabs. However, those fabs materialize overseas, depending on overseas supply chains. The EU and US regions want to build out more of the supply chain domestically, for strategic reasons. Those governments could simply legislate to impose heavy restrictions, but that hurts the competitiveness of the companies involved. And so, they combine that stick with a carrot, which is the government investments. You can already see increased restrictions on the semi supply chain in China, timed right after the CHIPS act passed.
Please just downvote these comments (and then flag them if you can), rather than replying.
If you aren't able to downvote or flag them, then please still abstain from responding. It will get killed eventually, but replying brings undue attention, thwarting the point of moderation.
1) We need chip manufacturing to be nationalized in the USA - if it's that important to national security we don't need to leave it in the hands of private industry.
2) Taiwan is not China. We are going to break the rest of China up because Xi decided to consolidate power instead of steward the distributed power he inherited.
3) The USA isn't in trouble at all; we will expand our industries, inflate our currency and strengthen it so demand globally grows as Russia, EU and China falter.
4) China took HK almost 3 decades early so why should anyone believe their word on territorial respect.
> 1) We need chip manufacturing to be nationalized in the USA - if it's that important to national security we don't need to leave it in the hands of private industry
I generally agree with you that countries should have control over strategic industries (e.g., oil), but I'm not sure if nationalisation is the way to go.
I feel like that serves more to scare off investors than anything else. The way the US is going about it feels more correct to me: give fiscal and financial incentives for these strategic resources to be built and managed inside the country, while also removing incentives for too many exports
If you believe oil should be then so should all energy; including the entirely government created "alternative energy" industry.
Investors will be scared of the US nationalizing specific strategic industries but not the changing political winds of foreign nations? I don't think so.
I don't understand your comment. You seem to believe because I stated something it means that I'm denying something else.
If clean energy sources are strategic, yeah the US should do the work to protect its ability to utilise it regardless of it being oil, solar, wind, nuclear. Doesn't mean the state needs to own those ventures, just that they should put in the effort to fund investment and growth in strategic areas.
With the Skyscraper tall wall of facts that article is composed, one would think such writing would have an index of references. But nope, what The Economists publishes sounds factual but is barely a nudge above laundry room gossip with a complete lack of references, lack of accountability for that wall of facts. It is truly amazing how manipulated our official discourse is on these critical issues. How to know what is opinion?
Why do you say that? Almost every paragraph contains numerous references to either industry reports, sales numbers and market shares, various company projections past and present, relevant global events, laws passed or government statements, market performance and whatnot.
They aren't enumerated and listed at the end sure, but they're there.
Everything can be predicted if you understand energy.
Companies can't survive in a peak world without manufacturing crap. Sell more because your tools break.
So now they are looking at how to do that under the premise of eternal growth:
They will try to lock us down in the hardware = deprecate older hardware and force you to move to never software with TLS 1.3.
That has never succeded because you can always hack everything = They will try to rent out the accounts.
They allready started that process, but I'm not buying it. I have all the software I need under permanent license.
Since processors now have peaked, everyone is buying all the computers they can, the really smart ones are buying low energy devices like Raspberry but 1151 Xeon is also sold out.
Anything manufactured today will probably have hardware kill-switches or programmed obsolescence. For companies: "To not lock your customer down for eternity is suicide"...
Fine, I'll bite. I downvoted you because TLS 1.3 isn't a conspiracy to make your old stuff break, and such an allegation is undeserving of a reply. You should be able to run an HTTP/S proxy supporting TLS 1.3 on any machine, issuing your own cert to machines that insist on unsupported HTTPS connection types, and route most of your traffic through it without issue.
Raspberry Pis are out of stock because 1) companies that used them in production and got those production builds certified in some way get preference and 2) scalpers are taking the rest of the stock and doubling their money with it as it drops.
Older Xeons (and similar hardware) aren't worth running unless you have access to really cheap electricity; upgrading your system is cheaper than paying for the electricity you'd be wasting otherwise, even if you're staying a gen or two behind by buying datacenter surplus from eBay et al.
I understand your consternation, as some devices (e.g. cell phones) and some applications (e.g. SaaS apps) definitely appear to exhibit rent-seeking behavior. But that's no reason to declare literally everything a conspiracy, which just makes you appear to have some wires crossed.
You should give https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/ssl/why-use-tls-1.3/ a read. Put briefly, TLS 1.2 supports cyphersuites that make it less secure and requires more roundtripping. It's not a surprise to me that some folks don't support it.
Furthermore, the makers of Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto don't owe you the ability to use outdated OSes if you're using a service they maintain. They probably didn't intend to break your workflow, and instead wanted to make their own stuff more secure.
If you're not a W10 fan, you could always run Minecraft on Linux. I think GTA V works on there as well. Either way, there's an out.
Using MacOS buys you some more time. Linux is a dumpster fire (no its not the year of Linux nor will I try Linux Mint for the 1000th time). While its not open source, MacOS still acts like an OS from the Win 7 days...for now anyway. They will probably end up going down the road of Win 11 but I think its going to take many more years till they get there.
They also offer excellent support. Their hardware gets like 10 years of OS updates. An M2 Mac today will last well past the next two US presidential cycles.
Have you even tried an M1/M2 based computer? Its like when I moved from HDD to SSD, an unbelievable revolution in performance and snappiness.
>M1-2 are brittle and controlled, the opposite of open/repairable etc.
We have reached the point where we cannot have removable ram for technical reasons. M chips get a a lot of their performance from excellent memory bandwidth. Move on from this thought process. The software is still gives you more control compared to Windows and thats what really matters, not the arch that it is running.
>If you don't have this hardware, you'll get something that will last max 10 years.
10 years is enough time for the next computing paradigm shift. It is great that MacOS lets us hold onto the old world for 10 more years(hopefully).
>USA has banned China from manufacturing without having a replacement.
Thats a temporary issue. They mostly made low end junk silicon anyway.
Raspberry 4 has 2Gflops/W on 28nm where M1 has 2.5 on 5!!!
There wont be a next paradigm shift.
DRR3 > DDR4 > DDR 5 > DDR6 in latency.
Multicore is leveraged fully, it's the end of electric transistors.
Memory has been slower than the CPU for 30 years! L1, L2, L3 only works around the problem, it does not solve the problem!
You don't understand that SSDs peaked in 2011 when it comes to longevity at 60nm with 100.000 writes per bit.
SATA chipsets/drivers offload the IO more than PCI-e which uses the CPU to buffer.
Older is now better than new.
It's over and when you are trying to get a new laptop in a few years (because your M1 broke) and they will cost $10.000 and break in 2 years and you have to pay $100/month to be able to access/develop on it. You'll remember me.
> Everything can be predicted if you understand energy
Energy, while vital, is not the only component in any part of an economy.
> Companies can't survive in a peak world without manufacturing crap. Sell more because your tools break.
This cuts both ways. If tools break too often or too easily, someone else will manufacture a tool that lasts. That tool will then sell millions or even billions of units. This can sustain a company for quite a long time.
> So now they are looking at how to do that under the premise of eternal growth
No one believes in or expects "eternal" growth. It is well known that any bubble fueled by cheap money, government bailouts, corporate welfare, or any other intervention will eventually burst. This is planned for by the very largest companies. Companies without the resources to plan for these market crashes simply do the best that they can.
> They will try to lock us down in the hardware = deprecate older hardware and force you to move to never software with TLS 1.3
I feel your pain here as an enthusiast for older hardware, but this is simply untrue. No one ever forced me to give up my ZX81, my XT, or my PPC lampshade iMac. I have them, I've kept them running, and they're fine. The XT and PPC can get online just fine either with a TLS bridge or with sites like 68k.news and frogfind.com. The constant upgrade cycle is optional. People are keep phones longer than ever. The cool-down in the PC market indicates that those enthusiasts who wanted to upgrade have done so. The heat up now is likely to be datacenters where the next wave of AMD Epyc offers a very massive energy to performance trade-off against Skylake SP. All of that said, eWaste is an issue and companies who make hardware that cannot be serviced and/or upgraded easily should probably pay a tax on it.
> Since processors now have peaked
There's plenty of room at the bottom. Seriously. I do not normally make appeals to authority because doing so is stupid, but we are talking about the most complicated machines humans have ever created. In this case, I would urge you to listen to the guy who has made these machines with extreme success: Jim Keller. He thinks we still have a long roadway of improvements before we are forced to change the industry in major ways (Gallium Arsenide or quantum or something).
> Anything manufactured today will probably have hardware kill-switches or programmed obsolescence
Already kind of illegal in some jurisdictions, and already a thing in others. Mixed bag there. However, also completely untrue as you used "anything". For example, in the automobile space you can sill get a Jeep with solid axels, a simple naturally aspirated V6, body on frame, and able to be serviced in pretty much any garage anywhere. The will to deal with tradeoffs of such a vehicle is the largest obstacle. Likewise, with computing, the willingness to deal with the tradeoffs is the problem. Do you want the best performance with most convenience? Then you likely want an M1/M2 MBP, and there you are not very serviceable. You could always get a Framework or build yourself a desktop. You can even run Linux, BSD, or Haiku if you want to make sure that your software will be serviceable by you.
In any case, the limit is on you. You can choose the locked-down products, or you can choose open platforms. Most people choose a mixture based upon their needs and preferences. The preponderance of that selfsame majority then determines the overall direction of global markets. This isn't some shadowy cabal purposefully making a system that is unsustainable, this is the consequence of an aggregate of choices that put momentum behind certain things.
You mean like lightbulb companies for the last 100 years?
How can two people missunderstand eternal growth... I said premise... that is what they promise... obviously it dosen't exist!!! Do I need to add /s or something?!
Jim Keller has been wrong so far... he can't solve the memory bottleneck.
You can choose a non-locked down product now maybe, in 12 months not a chance in hell!
