1/ Been meaning to respond to this excellent comment on @notXiangyu's podcast
2/ The gist of the comment is that Intel was not a factor in lobbying for sanctions on Huawei fabbing at TSMC; Taiwan's government also didn't have mcuh to do with it; and the main driver of the sanctions was a fight around 5G, led by US competitors like Qualcomm
3/ The reality is that Qualcomm led the lobbying effort to decouple Huawei from TSMC but Intel, Apple, and several companies participated in it. Also, Tsai's regime was quietly supportive of the ban from 2018 onwards but asked the US to hold off until after the Jan 2020 elex
4/ The role of the Tsai regime in this was to tell TSMC they would work with the US govt to find companies (mainly Apple) that could fill the gap left by Huawei orders, which is what the meetings with Keith Krach in September 2020 were all about taipeitimes.com/News/front/arc…
5/ The other role was an implicit guarantee from the Tsai regime to the US that they wouldn't encourage TSMC to defy US sanctions and keep its orders with Huawei. Han Kuo-yu, in contrast, had been contemplating this.
6/ The Tsai regime made this call explicit when they spoke of using TSMC to work with the US and restructure the global electronics supply chain away from China and specifically away from Chinese companies that had advanced semiconductor design capabilities (ie Huawei).
end/ This is why the Tsai regime is a willing accomplice in driving US tech decoupling - and why the government of China now believes that regime change on Taiwan island is necessary to guarantee the security of its semiconductor supply chain and tech development as a whole.

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More from @TheDailyMao

25 Jan
Adding a few other notes here: these economies are *short* volatility. If your welfare/security depends on China/US getting along enough not to fight but being far enough apart to privilege your companies in the global value chain, then your country is a glass menagerie
You need the international environment to sit in a permanent Goldilocks zone to make the whole strategy work. This is why the US/UK strategy of soft containment / D-10 is ultimately self-limiting. It shifts the environment out of the Goldilocks zone
Abstracting away from the contest of nations to the contest of ideologies, if you are someone who wants to do Marxism instead of just tweeting about it, you should figure out how to make Marxism better than liberalism at providing the intl environment for welfare/security
Read 5 tweets
25 Jan
1/ Germany's challenge is that its financial solvency and physical security are underwritten by Fed swaps and the DoD, its leading industrial/consumer firms depend on Chinese demand for growth, and its energy inputs rely on Russia and the GCC
2/ This means its foreign policy will forever strive for balance plus a mild pro-America tilt - within an international environment that is *low tension*. Humanitarian values come after all this.
3/ This is what ideologues like IPAC don't understand - their emphasis on 1) polarizing the international environment and 2) making the EU take sides in that environment is antithetical to Germany's entire national strategy. In a sense, they are *anti-German*
Read 6 tweets
24 Jan
Or as I like to call it, the West's Central Committee
Fun fact: in college I RA'd for a guy who was a former member of the Bilderberg Steering Committee. One job I had was copying his paper rolodex into Outlook. When I got to George HW Bush he told me to put in Bush's golf caddy's cell phone instead of the landline.
Most of the time, people who are in that circle perform a sort of bridging function. Here, you can see attendees Kravis, Paulson, Thornton, both Greenbergs, etc mediating a discussion between Wang Qishan and US business execs trying to press China for more market opening
Read 7 tweets
23 Jan
You should realize that this isn't just one isolated case. The China Watcher field is full of creeps and pedos - they just hush it up. @BadChinaTake Maybe you, Jessica Drun, and Claire Chu should share some of your stories. Then again, you won't, because "it might hurt the cause"
Today in China Watching logic: refusing to speak up against known abusers is a virtuous act if you're doing it to protect your selfish career prospects. Oh and if you get called out on sweeping this under the rug, you should just post private DMs and then block them
But remember this kind of logic doesn't just extend to abuse within the circle. China Watcher hero and idol Matt Pottinger supported initiatives that shielded bacha bazi practitioners when he was in Afghanistan. These accusations are not 'irresponsible', Mr. Rogin.
Read 8 tweets
23 Jan
Sneak peek of the Taiwan war thread, based on some preliminary research...

1/
2/ The military outcome of Operation Taiwan is a foregone conclusion. China's biggest challenge will be managing the diplomatic fallout and popular sentiment on the island.
3/ It's uncertain whether even the US could save Taiwan. For example, a 2017 RAND study estimated the US would have to dedicate between 100% and 250% (not a typo) of the *globally available* US fighter aircraft inventory to fighting China in order to protect the island
Read 8 tweets
21 Jan
According to the US government, this is:
Genocide Not Genocide
According to the US government, this is:
Genocide Not Genocide
According to the US government, this is:
Genocide Not Genocide
Read 11 tweets

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