Will China Invade Taiwan Next?

Select video clips courtesy of Getty Images

Select video clips courtesy of the AP Archive

Special thanks to MapTiler / OpenStreetMap Contributors and GEOlayers 3

[TierZoo]

Wait so is Taiwan ahead of literally everyone on the tech tree? Is there some secret advanced technique that allows them and only them to produce the best semiconductors?

[tsukoninP]

As Taiwanese, we often nickname TSMC as "the holy mountain that protects nation (護國神山)" because of its strong semiconductor industry that made our country prosperous. but I guess this nickname is becoming more and more a reality now.

[RockWei]

Fun fact:NVIDIA’s CEO Jensen Huang and AMD’s CEO Lisa Su they both are Taiwanese and they are related.

[artugert]

I've seen lots of content on this subject, and this is one of the best articulated summaries I've seen.

[ErikHare]

It's interesting that you did not mention Japan's commitment to the defense of Taiwan and their participation in the Quad. They are usually discounted, but their presence in or near the Yellow Sea would require China to maintain some PLA force in the North, limited what can be devoted to Taiwan. In addition, India's membership in this pretty much assures that the moment China engages Taiwan their oil is cut off, meaning that the attack would have to be lightning fast. It's not just the US that China needs to worry about, in other words, and that is significant.

[Nathan-ucrn]

It would be insane to witness a world war with 21st century technology being used on both sides. So many videogames try to portray "futuristic warfare, " but seeing it happen for real just seems unfathomable in a modern sense. We're kind of at a point as a species where war between industrialized nations is just bad for everyone involved.

[Matthew_Murray]

This was really good so many people oversimplify the situation as being "well if Russia would have taken Ukraine then China would have immediately gone after Taiwan", completely forgetting that the Taiwan situation is vastly more complicated.

[ryans]

Within the last few months, Japan has begun converting one of its helicopter carriers to a full-blown fixed-wing aircraft carrier. This will be the first air craft carrier in Japan's armada since WWII

[Steamrick]

One thing to note: *ALL* EUV machines - without which the most modern foundry processes are impossible - are manufactured by ASML, a dutch company. Capturing TSMC while getting sanctioned from ASML would just doom TSMC to becoming irrelevant within a few years. I'm sure there's more upstream supply constraints elsewhere in the process if you know where to look.

[pcenero]

I don't think people realize this detail (probably not even the editor) but I like how the map POV rotates instead of being at fixed orientation. Really gives you perspective on how arbitrary and weird country territories actually look like when you're not immediately familiar with the shape.

[kevinscheffler]

I am rarely commenting any videos on youtube but I have to say that your videos have an insane quality and also dept of information. It can give you an impression of complex situations all around the world in just under an hour. Thanks a lot for that. Furthermore I hope that this conflict will be threatend peacefully so that no chinese or western people are harmed in any way. Best regards from Germany.

[PhilHug]

I had no clue Taiwan controlled all those tiny island right next to China...

[connorallison]

(TLDR at the bottom)
One massive item that was missed in this wonderful video (which, in fairness to the creator, only happened a day before releasing the video) is the modernization levels of global militaries allied to the US that would be called to arms in defense of Taiwan; not just at the highest level of military-technical abilities, but what the mean technical level throughout a military is. For example, Russian military forces can field a modern infantryman, equipped with a modern rifle, optic, night vision equipment, modern body armor, and modern communication equipment. However most of the troops seen in Ukraine are seen with only parts of this list, often missing modern communication equipment, night vision equipment, optics, and so on. Thus, while Russia's peak technical ability is on par with a modern military, its mean technical ability is below average. But China has been seen fielding an ever-increasingly modern military at a higher mean technical level than Russian forces (though still below US standards), so how does this affect them? Well, it doesn't; not directly at least. Where it does affect china is in the arsenals of national armories of nations that the US might call upon as allies should they invade Taiwan, much like was seen in operation desert storm.

In recent years, criticism was leveled at many nato nations for having poorly equipped and steadily outdating militaries, however with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, many nations have been sending heavy equipment to the aid of Ukraine, with a large focus on their oldest units that are still in operation first. because of this, most European nations now have a gulf in their abilities as many of their own forces are now without equipment, mostly tanks, airplanes, artillery, and logistics. Modern equipment will need to be acquired by these nations, such as Poland, Germany, Romania, and the united kingdom, which will drastically improve their mean technical ability. Many US-allied nations have already started this process or accelerated an ongoing process, with Poland eying American f-16s or Germany green lighting f-35s.

The US military aid package of 33 billion dollars (slightly more than Australia, the 10th largest defense spender 2020 yearly defense budget) has a focus on providing the money necessary for any military who was impacted by the invasion to purchase new and modern equipment to replace anything that was sent to Ukraine. what this means for china is that if the US forms an international coalition as they did with Kuwait, the militaries they can provide will be far better equipped than they were a few months ago.

TLDR: the Russian invasion of Ukraine has sparked many US allies to modernize their militaries and the US is providing them the money needed to do so, if china invades twain and the US assembles an international coalition as they did in Kuwait, it will be far more potent than it would be currently.

[laurwolfxd_]

Love the long videos, I get into them without realizing how long they actually are because they're just so interesting. Awesome work RLL!

[hayden.]

i like hearing your voice while discussing and talking about what had happened outside world❤

[kchardisty]

i wish nebula had a comment section because i love the modern conflict series, all those videos are great

[Leavus]

Dadgum, I'm only halfway through the video, coming in with ludicrously high expectations, and I'm still impressed. This channel just keeps getting better and better.

[jaketaylor]

I live in arizona, and the TSMC plant here had TONS of bipartisan support. Arizona is investing in becoming a tech corridor, with Intel, Apple, Microsoft, Honeywell, Raytheon, and tons of other tech companies ramping up investments. The only issue is that these fabs/server warehouses uses water to cool the technology. Really interesting debates going on pertaining to all the tech investment, and what strain tech invesent has on our other resources.

[thxenos]

12:47 It was pretty funny for me that you said TSMC is a company you've never heard of, then I remembered not all people are into tech. If you have follow any news about modern technology, TSMC is always in the news. Even their biggest competitor, which is Samsung, uses their chips in some of their own phones.

[iadduk]

One more point. TSMC goes for 1-2 nanometers, but at it is most likely the maximum that can be squeezed out of silicon. Whoever switches first to a more promising an entirely different base element for semiconductors would most likely change and dominate the landscape of chip manufacturing.