The news today was as usual the propaganda one would expect from America’s financial media. It is written by unicorn seeking individuals who think that the “new world” is how everything exists and their words as “experts” be it always unnamed is the end all be all fact.
Today’s story promoting fallacious nonsense was provided via Bloomberg. Since I refuse to subscribe or deal with that company, fortunately it was reprinted by the South China Morning Post where I get a pulse of what is happening inside of China.
TSMC and ASML can remotely disable chip-making equipment if mainland China invades Taiwan
The headline is absurd on its own.
The reasoning behind it appears to be a weak attempt by the United States to intimidate President Xi and the Chinese Communist Party. This is very mistaken idea for if one has read up on or studied Xi’s history, they might remember this aspect of his upbringing:
The cave China’s leader Xi Jinping lived in as a teenager
From the October 19, 2015 article via the BBC:
Today it is a heavily guarded shrine to China’s leader, but tens of millions of people still live in caves nearby, in what is one of the country’s poorest regions.
BBC’s China editor Carrie Gracie travelled to the subterranean home where the man who became China’s president lived between 1968 and 1975.
The emphasis in the quote above is my own.
This brings up a serious question; does anyone with a brain or even a remote study of history understand that Jake Sullivan, John Kirby, or the lunatic fringe which occupies our Congress and the White House can intimidate a man who has truly risen from the bottom of his society in a communist dictatorship to the top?
Thus why the following excerpt from the South China Morning Post version of the story is important.
Officials from the US government have privately expressed concerns to both their Dutch and Taiwanese counterparts about what happens if Chinese aggression escalates into an attack on the island responsible for producing the vast majority of the world’s advanced semiconductors, two of the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
ASML reassured officials about its ability to remotely disable the machines when the Dutch government met with the company on the threat, two others said. The Netherlands has run simulations on a possible invasion in order to better assess the risks, they added.
In other words, the unnamed “officials from the US government” are speaking about something they do not understand nor as to why an invasion of Taiwan would occur.
But why would this ability be irrelevant?
More from the same story:
Evidence suggests the restrictions may have come too late to stem Chinese advances. Huawei Technologies last year produced a smartphone to rival Apple’s iPhone using chips made with older ASML printers in combination with tools from two US suppliers, Bloomberg News reported in October after conducting a break-down of the phone.
Beijing has made technological self-sufficiency a national priority and Huawei’s efforts to advance domestic chip design and manufacture have received government backing.
This presents the obvious lack of information, understanding, and most importantly education about the situation in Taiwan and within the Chinese mainland itself.
Despite popular belief in the “new new” global order the Biden administration thinks still exists, the Chinese government continues to promote the superiority of the Chinese culture, government, and economy over foreign enemies. The United States being the new supreme enemy of their people.
That movie was from almost two years ago, and cements the mentality of a large portion of their population as to not wanting a repeat of the Korean War nor losing to the United States again. It was a huge hit in China, and still replays to large viewership to this day.
The Communist Party of China will fight tooth and nail to remind everyone that the US and its allies will block the reunification of Taiwan with the mainland, thus sacrifices must occur.
So what does that have to do with the Bloomberg/South China Morning Post article above?
Everything.
If mainland China were to invade Taiwan the least of their concerns would be preserving the functionality of ASML and Taiwan Semiconductor factories. In fact destroying them as an act of defiance might be part of their initial wave of attacks to send a message to Taipei that yield or the mainland will eradicate any semblance of economic viability the little nation might have.
Once those factories go offline, it is not mainland China that would suffer; in fact they would not even notice it.
The United States and Europe however would suffer a crippling economic blow. The idea that America’s now fledgling “CHIPS Act” would replace Taiwanese and mainland Chinese semiconductors is laughable as the Federal, state, and judicial obstructions will and have delayed construction of new factories, creating bottlenecks that may not be overcome until after 2030.
As late as November 2023, the United States International Trade Commission warned that the disruptions on a financial scale would be massive as the price change would cripple American industry, much less allow the manufacturing sector an opportunity to find rapidly accessible substitute suppliers.
If China were to invade Taiwan it would be for nationalistic and economic purposes, not because they are worried about capturing ASML or TSMC factories.
The truth is that such an action would be designed in concert with a potential embargo against the US of all exports, to cripple the American government’s ability to retaliate or engage in a war with China should such an invasion occur.
Once again Bloomberg, and the mainstream American media misses the mark; such an attack would not serve the purposes their Ivy League educated minds fail to grasp:
An act of war like this is not about revising the current global order.
It would be about establishing a new one.
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