I doubt the parent has access to American war plans, but it's reasonable to guess that the US would prefer for China not to have intact TSMC plants because it provides enormous leverage. It's the same as blowing up Nordstream II. This is standard war stuff, and if the US is at war with China, heavy sanctions, etc, we wouldn't be able to buy the chips anyway. Why not drop a cruise missile on it?

Personally I hope such a thing doesn't happen. If I had to guess, Taiwan will eventually come under mainland China's control, but I hope this is done very slowly and in a bloodless way following a referendum by the Taiwanese themselves (e.g., only after certain guarantees of autonomy are made and the Taiwanese opt for the 'easy route'). I doubt mainland China will accept this thorn in their side indefinitely.

> e.g., only after certain guarantees of autonomy are made and the Taiwanese opt for the 'easy route'

Is that really so plausible after what happened in Hong Kong?

It may end up being a question of choosing to be Hong Kong or choosing to be Ukraine.

China doesn't want this to be like the Ukraine conflict either. I don't know if and how guarantees of some autonomy can be made that carry some significant degree of trust, but it's the least bad solution for all parties to make that happen.

Mutually Assured (Economic) Destruction. If destroying the TSMC factories is off the table, then China is incentivized to invade (to capture leading edge chip production). If the fabs are destroyed, it would take years to rebuild, which will cripple Chinese production of consumer goods using those chips.

Personally, I would be shocked if the US military doesn't also have a plan to "relocate" strategic personnel to the US in the event of invasion by China.

This might be feasible, but it seems like we're pushing every possible lever to tell the PRC to make their own silicon ASAP.

Yeah, they're behind now, but given it's now strategically important both economically and militarily, can that be expected to last forever?

I’m not sure it’s proven China can build better products under their system than countries with freedom. Maybe only DJI are doing this in the consumer space today. The West/Japan/SK/Taiwan are still massively ahead in building the more complex components that China then assembles.

It appears the West is slowly untangling their economies from Chinese dependency and about 1/3 of stuff is made there today. With zero covid making them an unreliable manufacturing partner I doubt this will increase in the short term. I am pretty sure high end fabs will be returning to the west very soon and America could not have a better competitor than China to push them forward to new heights. I would bet on free countries producing most on the innovation over the next 20 years.