To be honest you wouldn’t need to blow much up. ASML have staff on site at part of their support contracts for the lithography kit. I doubt they will hang around if China occupied Taiwan and I suspect license keys would quickly expire. The jobs at TSMC are highly skilled so you won’t just be dropping in mainland staff to replace anyone who fled or got killed during the invasion. Even if they get the plant limping along the yields are likely to drop and there would likely be no Western customers for an appropriated fab plant.
In short there are lots reasons invading a country to seize the means silicon wafer production is not likely going to work. I also doubt China see manufacturing as worthwhile spoils of war, a decision to invade is more likely going to be driven by ideological motives.
a decision to invade is more likely going to be driven by ideological motives.
This is spot on. I’ve spent a decent bit of time in China for work and became good friends with one lad there. Over more than a few beers one night Taiwan came up and we had a friendly bet about whether China would invade within 5 years (this was just before COVID so I’ve won and free beers are coming my way).
Anyway long story short, his view was roughly: that’s China and you bet your bollix we’re going to take it by force.
I’d bet more beers his view is a majority but it’s hard to tell because Chinese folks do not like discussing politics in general.
Yeah TSMC and ASML have both said they’ll destroy their infrastructure if necessary.
To be honest you wouldn’t need to blow much up. ASML have staff on site at part of their support contracts for the lithography kit. I doubt they will hang around if China occupied Taiwan and I suspect license keys would quickly expire. The jobs at TSMC are highly skilled so you won’t just be dropping in mainland staff to replace anyone who fled or got killed during the invasion. Even if they get the plant limping along the yields are likely to drop and there would likely be no Western customers for an appropriated fab plant.
In short there are lots reasons invading a country to seize the means silicon wafer production is not likely going to work. I also doubt China see manufacturing as worthwhile spoils of war, a decision to invade is more likely going to be driven by ideological motives.
This is spot on. I’ve spent a decent bit of time in China for work and became good friends with one lad there. Over more than a few beers one night Taiwan came up and we had a friendly bet about whether China would invade within 5 years (this was just before COVID so I’ve won and free beers are coming my way).
Anyway long story short, his view was roughly: that’s China and you bet your bollix we’re going to take it by force.
I’d bet more beers his view is a majority but it’s hard to tell because Chinese folks do not like discussing politics in general.