The dilemma of electronic chips.. Why will Washington defend Taiwan as a US state?

Translation Introduction:

Could the United States get involved in a military confrontation with China if the latter decided to annex Taiwan by force?

Why would Washington go to war to protect a small island thousands of miles from its border?

In this article in The Atlantic, Jason Matney, president of the prestigious RAND Corporation, sheds light on the real reason why Washington will defend Taiwan as a US state, and the ways in which the United States might prepare for this potential confrontation.

Translation text:

Taiwan's dominance of the chip industry has been a boon to the global economy, but now it poses a real challenge. Today, Taiwan manufactures most of the world's chip, and they are used in just about everything: from cars to coffee machines to combine harvesters.

The entire world is teeming with components containing electronic chips, most of which are manufactured in a few factories located on an island nearly twice the size of Kuwait.

And there, a little over a hundred miles across the strait, lay the Chinese mainland;

China views Taiwan as a breakaway region and is tasked with bringing it back under its control.

If China tightens its control and takes over Taiwan, two things could happen to supply these chips: first, that these factories would fall under China's control, and second, that these factories would be destroyed in the midst of a conflict between the two countries.

Either way, a global catastrophe will inevitably happen.

In the first scenario, China could decide to restrict the access of the United States and its allies to advanced electronic chips, thereby curtailing America's technological, military, and economic advantage.

But if the second scenario occurs, the world will witness an economic crisis the likes of which we have not seen since the Great Depression (1929).

Chip Island

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (Shutterstock)

Fortunately, Taiwan is watching and learning from the Ukrainian resistance in the face of the Russian invasion.

The lessons that Taiwan draws from this war tell us how the United States can help Taipei avoid both devastating outcomes.

One of the major manufacturers on the island is Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited, which was founded in 1987 by government initiative and now manufactures many of the world's most important microchips for companies such as Apple and Nvidia, Qualcomm, and thousands of other companies.

Thirty years ago, when Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (TSMC) had just embarked on making electronic chips, the American company Intel manufactured about 65% of the world's electronic chips. Today, Intel makes

To know how important this issue is, one need only look at the US auto industry, where the industry expected a loss of about $210 billion last year, after the pandemic-induced factory slowdown led to disruptions in automotive chip supply chains.

And in the event of a conflict with China, the destruction of Taiwan's manufacturing of small electronic parts would mean not only a slowdown or faltering, but also a sudden and complete halt to nearly two-thirds of the world's supply to industries that depend on electronic chips.

There is a view about the risks related to Taiwan's semi-monopoly in chip manufacturing vis-à-vis China, which is that the problem is at its core with supply chains, so the best way out of this potential catastrophe is to increase production elsewhere, including the United States.

The recently passed bipartisan CHIPS Act, which will fund programs worth $53 billion, is explicit in its goals of “developing domestic manufacturing of semiconductors important to the competitiveness and national security of the United States.”

Another position on Taiwan is that this problem is a strategic military problem, and that the best way to respond to any invasion launched by China is for the United States to rise in defense of Taiwan.

President Joe Biden made this clear when he was asked in a recent interview on "Sixty Minutes" whether the United States would rise to defend the island, and he replied, "Yes, if an unprecedented attack was launched."

Washington is running out of time

The problem with these two views is that they misunderstand the importance of time.

The idea of ​​replacing chip imports with American-made products understates the forty-year-old Taiwanese advantage in this industry, not forgetting that Taiwan took at least a decade to become globally competitive.

The United States will suffer a similar delay, requiring at least several decades and more investment before it can manufacture most of the chips it needs domestically.

An additional complication is that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing's operations have advantages that are hard to imagine replicating elsewhere.

For example, the company's advanced research department includes engineers who work in three phases so that the company can work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and this "Nightingale Army" as it is sometimes known (relative to the nightingales that sing in the evening)* sacrifices itself in sacrifice For this national goal, it is Taiwan's "silicon shield".

The problem of time with the idea of ​​jumping to defend Taiwan is that if China launches an attack, it may be too late.

If China invaded Taiwan, it could have destroyed the chip factories on the coast, while the United States would be at the beginning of a military response to the Chinese attack, and then the world would be effectively on its way to the edge of an economic abyss.

A third option for the United States is to make China's invasion of Taiwan too costly.

By enabling Taiwan to defend itself.

The Biden administration requested as early as last September that it sell $1.1 billion worth of arms to Taiwan, which is expected to be approved by Congress.

This military deal will include air and anti-ship missiles, in addition to an estimated $665 million in support of Taiwan's surveillance radar programme.

But Taiwan may need more defense to deter a premeditated invasion.

Taiwan has an unfortunate history of spending its defense budget on expensive programs such as combat aircraft and surface ships, neither of which is likely to survive the early days of a war with China, as some of the particular types of weapons the United States agreed to sell Taiwan is used by the Ukrainians in their defensive war against Russia now.

Even more effective is that there are classes of systems, such as the HIMARS High Mobility Missile System (HIMARS), drones, drop munitions, anti-tank missiles, and naval mines, that can do the job at a relatively low cost, since one-tenth of the investment in the Chips Act is enough. For Taiwan to build the so-called “Porcupine Defense” , so that the small country's dependence on conventional weapons such as tanks and combat aircraft decreases, and its dependence increases on a large number of smaller, lighter and more effective systems in the face of large armies)*.

Thus, such a strategy - which has already proven effective in Ukraine - could bear fruit within two years, rather than decades.

One of the obstacles to the rapid armament of Taiwan, which the Americans desire, is the impasse that the American arms industry is currently suffering from, which is paradoxically caused by the electronic chips themselves.

The problem is temporary, but the focus should be on ensuring that Taiwan has adequate defense systems to enhance its security in the fastest and easiest way.

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This article was translated from The Atlantic and does not necessarily represent the Meydan website.

Translation: Karim Muhammad.