Comment by dtquad

16 days ago

So many people wanted this to fail.

Why?

  • Many commenters on HN have this weird idea that if Taiwan is slightly ahead of competition, US would defend Taiwan against a country with nukes. Or that TSMC superiority is Taiwan's national security issue.

    • > Many commenters on HN have this weird idea that if Taiwan is slightly ahead of competition, US would defend Taiwan against a country with nukes. Or that TSMC superiority is Taiwan's national security issue.

      Well... TSMC is definitely a component of Taiwan's national security. It's called the "Silicon Shield" for a reason.

      And the US definitely has more reasons to go to war, and more importantly, threaten war to prevent one breaking out, over Taiwan if it knows there will be a massive economic impact.

      And China definitely knows that if Taiwan is important for the US, it's almost certain the US would defend it.

  • Some people are against industrial policy (like the CHIPS Act) because they don't believe that market failure exists.

    Some people are against Biden/Dems.

    Some people are clueless about the foreign policy and the geopolitical reality in Asia and take the status quo regional power balance as a given.

  • Not on the I want it to fail side but my main question is why we put this water intensive industry in Arizona instead of further east where water is less stressed as a resource?

    Seems like it would be way better off being somewhere in the eastern half of the country or at least not in the Southwest.

    • water is a non-issue. The main issue in deciding where a factory should go is which state will give you the most to do it.