Falsedichotomy

China?

The western hope in admitting China to WTO was that it would become more democratic. That didn't work. Globalism has failed. The reason China did so well is they bent the WTO trade rules when it suited them and have large subsidies from the government. Now they are weaponising that success.

All western nations outsourcing their manufacturing to the "third world" and hollowing out their manufacturing capabilities and therefore being vulnerable to supply chain issues and other governments that weaponise trade. It's our fault too. We like cheap goods. But globalism has failed.

It will be more than just a price rise in prices of premium chips. The world cannot afford to give up Taiwan. At Davos, the US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said: "I would say that the single biggest threat to the world economy, the single biggest point of single failure, is that 97 percent of the high-end chips are made in Taiwan," Bessent told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He described a potential blockade or destruction of the island's manufacturing capacity as an "economic apocalypse," emphasizing Washington's efforts to relocate semiconductor production to American soil." A blockade of these chips would send the world into the tech dark ages and we would certainly lose the AI arms race against China. As I understand it, it would take decades to build the ecosystem required to produce these high end chips.

The main reason for the subs and indeed, the increase in Australian defence spending and mobilisation is the threat of China taking Taiwan. The reason we got second hand ones was America can't make them fast enough. $5 billion dollars each I believe. America needs to make 2 a year but can't keep up. Probably cos China has a stranglehold on critical minerals for the development of defence assets, along with a hollowing out of manufacturing like most western countries. Australia, like the rest of the developed world, will enter a technological dark age if China takes Taiwan.