
A growing body of evidence suggests that the US would blow up the global economy to prevent China from laying claim to Taiwanâs semiconductor factories.
Former White House National Security Advisor Robert C. OâBrien has hinted at a sinister US contingency plan in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Rather than see Taiwanâs semiconductor factories fall into the hands of the Communist Party of China, the US and its allies would simply pull a Nordstream.
âThe United States and its allies are never going to let those factories fall into Chinese hands,â OâBrien told Semafor, a news outlet that has been funded by jailed Democratic financier Sam Bankman-Fried and his brother. OâBrien went on to compare the destruction of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Companyâs (TSMC) to Winston Churchillâs bombing of a French naval fleet after the countryâs surrender to Nazi Germany.
Semiconductors made in Taiwan are necessary for the functioning of everything from smartphones to cars. Taiwan manufactures around 65 percent of the worldâs semiconductors and close to 90 percent of advanced chips. Annually, a third of all new computing power generated globally is fabricated in Taiwan. The US National Security Council estimates that the loss of TSMC âcould disrupt the world economy to the tune of more than $1 trillion.â
As tensions rise over the Taiwan Strait, the US Treasury Department has published at least two studies on âthe overall market impact of an invasion,â while the National Security Council is conducting a study on âsemiconductors and US dependencies on TSMC.â
TSMCâs advanced chips are used in âall major US defense systems and platforms,â making them an essential building block of American empire.
Given these facts, it is highly likely that the destruction of Taiwanâs chip manufacturing plants would be the most damaging act of economic sabotage in history.
Having served in senior positions in the three administrations that preceded Bidenâs, few private American citizens are better positioned to receive and transmit the views of national security elites than OâBrien. As Donald Trumpâs National Security Advisor, he traveled to Arizona in 2020 to congratulate the stateâs governor on the opening of a $12 billion TSMC factory in the state, using the appearance as a platform to rail against Chinese communism. âLet us be clear, the Chinese Communist Party is a Marxist-Leninist organization. The Party General Secretary Xi Jinping sees himself as Josef Stalinâs successor,â OâBrien declared.
Ironically, it was the global capitalist system that led developing nations to place such strategic assets in non-strategic places like Taiwan. According to William Alan Reinsch, a Senior Advisor at Washingtonâs leading anti-China think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), chip manufacturers in the West preferred to place their plants in a âlow-wage, nonunion country that probably doesnât have environmental requirementsâ to maximize profits at the top.
Now, with such a vital industry located just 100 miles from mainland China, OâBrien is joining a chorus of foreign policy hardliners calling for a dog in the manger doctrine.
As Bloomberg reported in October 2022, former officials with ties to the Pentagon have urged the Biden administration to destroy Taiwanâs semiconductor industry in the event of a Chinese military assault. The outlet cited Elbridge Colby, a rabidly anti-China former Pentagon official, proclaiming, âWe canât allow such a valuable equity to fall into Chinese hands, I think it would be nuts.â
Last year, the US Army War Collegeâs most-downloaded paper called for a similarly ruthless strategy. âTo start, the United States and Taiwan should lay plans for a targeted scorched-earth strategy that would render Taiwan not just unattractive if ever seized by force, but positively costly to maintain,â the paper proposed. âThis could be done most effectively by threatening to destroy facilities belonging to the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the most important chipmaker in the world and Chinaâs most important supplier.â
âAn automatic mechanism might be designed, which would be triggered once an invasion was confirmed,â the paper suggested, adding that the US and its allies could âgive refugeâ to Taiwanese workers in the sector, while Taipei could make âand publicize plans to target the mainlandâs chip-fabrication lines using cruise and ballistic missiles, including the Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation facility in Shanghai.â The paper also proposed a âpreplanned sanctions campaign against any chip exports to China.â
The CSIS think tank ran a recent series of 24 war games pitting the US military against China following a hypothetical invasion of Taiwan in 2026. In the simulations, the US âlost dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft, and tens of thousands of service members,â while âTaiwan saw its economy devastated.â
Source: Popularresistance.org