Europe at Putin's Mercy, The World at China's
As the last week shows, Europe is at the mercy of Putin for their fuel. Did they not understand what they were doing when they shut down a majority of other ways they produced power or is that what you get when you make a Swedish teenager the Czar of energy for Europe?
The problem is that the world is at the mercy of China in a similar fashion. Without semiconductors, the world is lost, modern society will stop - perhaps it is fine to kill the social networks, but the rest? At least Intel is building in the US, but China has a stranglehold on everything else. If (when) China goes for Taiwan TSMC etc will be lost and they are a huge supplier worldwide.
It isn’t as if you can spin up a fab quickly. Just like you can’t spin up a power plant and supporting infrastructure. China must know this. Anyone with a brain in the US government must know this. What is the angle?
China: stop us and we stop memory and CPU shipments. We stop iPhones, computers etc. Look what happened with masks and other products in the spring of 2020.