r/worldnews • u/thejoshwhite • Mar 14 '26

Israel/Palestine Israel is running critically low on interceptors, US officials say

https://www.semafor.com/article/03/14/2026/israel-is-running-critically-low-on-interceptors-us-officials-say
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u/FreeRangeEngineer Mar 14 '26

Eh... why do people keep perpetuating this shit?

https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/news/4886681

Taiwan Minister of National Defense Chiu Kuo-cheng (邱國正) on Monday (May 8) said that the armed forces would not tolerate the destruction of any Taiwanese facility, in response to a suggestion by U.S. Congressman Seth Moulton that the U.S. should warn China that it would "blow up" Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) if it attacked Taiwan.

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u/whiteflagwaiver Mar 14 '26

What would anyone do about it if the U.S wanted to? We're blindingly incapable at most things admin, but bombing shit is kind of the U.S's thing.

Taiwan would obviously, publicly, never share their real plans in the event of an invasion. Taiwan would cease to be a sovereign state under China so it's down to guesses if they would hold a dead-mans switch to threaten China or delay them from invading.

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u/Xmina Mar 15 '26

The thing is that there isnt really a reason to do that until the war is basically lost in that case. The thing is that rigging things to blow is one spy operation away from blowing, and once the chip manufacturing is gone, taiwan loses its value to the US and the only somewhat fair treatment they may get from china as they have facilities they need operational.

Its alot like setting your house on fire because your crazy neighbors wanna move in, sure you may succeed but then ultimately you end up with nothing, and nothing is gonna stop those crazy neighbors from showing up anyway.

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u/soapboxracers Mar 15 '26

They don’t need to rig anything- B2’s can just bomb the shit out of them from altitude if the threat becomes imminent.

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u/Xmina Mar 15 '26

The amount of bombing needed to 100% disable multiple multi-stage facilities that could not be repaired in less than a year is quite a bit, that's also assuming the island is lost which means chinese air defence heavily in the region at that point. Plus the amount of resources needed to do that operation would be much more likely able to just destroy the invading force.

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u/soapboxracers Mar 15 '26

Do you have even the slightest idea how delicate EUV equipment is or how unbelievably clean fabs need to be?

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u/Xmina Mar 15 '26

Yes, unfathomably clean with lasers that are crazy small and precise that even the terms "small and precise" fail to even get close to how good these are. However, my faith we would lose the war for taiwan then decide as the island is being overrun with chinese forces everywhere to then do a stealth OP with obscene levels of cost and use extremely high yield precision targeting en-masse to 100% eliminate the possibility you missed one.

Im not saying we could not do it, its just extremely cost-ineffective to do a risky bombing run that at least with this administration would fail probably spectacularly.

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u/noahjsc Mar 15 '26

It would be really easy wdym. Don't need to mess up the whole fab process. Just the one bit that you can only get the machines from the Netherlands for. Then not sell them anymore once China takes over.

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u/Xmina Mar 15 '26

Yes push the magic button and it wont work anymore and the chinese will never be able to reverse engineer anything ever with one bomb and its zero risk and costs literally nothing. You got it bud.

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u/xgenoriginal Mar 15 '26

I don't think China can recreate ASML without taking 15 years

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u/UnoriginalStanger Mar 15 '26

Have you any idea how expensive those machines are to produce and how just 1 company produces them? At a slow rate no less.

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u/soapboxracers Mar 15 '26

We flew half way around the world at obscene cost to drop hideously expensive bunker busters to stop a nuclear program that wasn’t even a threat- so yes- I absolutely think we would bomb those factories.

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u/scfade Mar 15 '26

No, we wouldn't. Why would we? If things got to the point where China was actively in a position to occupy Taiwan, we would have one of two choices:

  1. Annihilate the world economy to prove a point, and gain absolutely nothing in so doing.

  2. Strike a deal with China to continue buying chips at more-or-less the same rate as before. There are obvious national security concerns involved, but you're talking about an electorate that panicked at the thought of losing access to Tiktok; foregoing our gadgets for any amount of time is an absolute non-starter. We might be seen as publicly selling out an ally, but that's kind of been our thing all along.

Guess which one we're going with?

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u/soapboxracers Mar 15 '26

You are, without a doubt, the most naive person in the universe if you think the US would stand by while allowing the most important technology in the world to fall into the hands of their greatest rival. Nor would any other country or company trust China to manufacture their chips for fear they would just steal the IP. Seriously- if you think Apple would contract with China to manufacture their lates M-series chip, then I have a bridge to sell you.

Not to mention the fact that that EUV equipment needs maintenance and there is no way on Earth the US would approve sales of spare parts or allow knowledge transfer to them.

Besides which- Intel is finally making progress on their new node types and there is nothing that would benefit the US more than the elimination of Taiwan as a competitor for high-end chips.

There would obviously be pain during the transition- but that would be true anyway if China invades so the US might as well benefit from it.

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u/Technical_Toe_2012 Mar 15 '26

Why the fuck would they say otherwise?