• Carrolade@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Depends how its set up. So long as it’s fully independent and disconnected from existing digital infrastructure it should be safer. It could be as simple as explosives hard-wired with a buried line running up into some bunker up in the mountains.

      • Tetsuo@jlai.lu
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        7 months ago

        By remotely I don’t think they meant a long RJ45 cable connected to nothing.

        So this doesn’t look like a setup that can be fully secure.

        Could even be completely fake and just to dissuade China from invading.

        • Carrolade@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Note, I said safer, not completely safe. Even a hard line to a bunker simply needs someone to locate the line and activate it.

          Completely safe does not and likely never will exist, as the history of human arms evolution should demonstrate.

          • Kowowow@lemmy.ca
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            7 months ago

            Assuming it wasn’t shielded and knew you where near by couldn’t you just broadcast the code or what ever with enough power to cause the same effect?

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        So long as it’s fully independent and disconnected from existing digital infrastructure it should be safer.

        It’s a puzzle, because anything with too many safety features can be easily disarmed. But anything with too few can be prematurely detonated.

        Imagine what happens to the Taiwanese economy if there’s a Chinese feint or false alarm and the facility bricks itself. A massive economic downturn would not work to the benefit of an island so heavily reliant on foreign trade.

      • AdamEatsAss@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        That’s what you have to do of you don’t want the invaders to get the tech. If you brick the processors they still have the machines. I’m not sure what the secret sauce is in this case, but china has a reputation of reverse engineering things in spite of foreign laws. The best way to keep it from happening is to make sure they get no part of it.

      • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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        7 months ago

        state actors have hacked airgapped equipment before, an actual backdoor will be ripe for exploitation.

          • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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            7 months ago

            remember the stuxnet botnet, and how nobody knew what it was for?

            turns out it was programmed to activate in the very specific conditions inside the iranian nuclear reactor facilities and sabotage it. the facility was airgapped but stuxnet was so ubiquitous in the country by then, someone just needed to bring the first usb stick in for it to be a pwn. or so goes the story.

            iirc the us and israel admitted to doing it years later, it was somewhere in the obama era and they wanted to sabotage iran’s nuclear program. the systems remained infected for years reporting bogus data and slightly messing with the parameters so it never worked well and their scientists remained stumped until the virus was discovered.

            shows how vulnerable our systems really are to organizations with unlimited money.

              • thallamabond@lemmy.world
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                7 months ago

                So? Those backdoors have been closed since 2010 (probably earlier). Also not too many people have an Iranian Nuclear program.

                • masquenox@lemmy.world
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                  7 months ago

                  The experts don’t share your optimism.

                  In the same report, Sean McGurk, a former cybersecurity official at the Department of Homeland Security noted that the Stuxnet source code could now be downloaded online and modified to be directed at new target systems. Speaking of the Stuxnet creators, he said, “They opened the box. They demonstrated the capability… It’s not something that can be put back.”

                  Dealing with Stuxnet has probably advanced Iranian cyberwarfare capablilites by several orders of magnitude that they wouldn’t have otherwise. That’s the problem with using this stuff as weaponry - they don’t explode.

        • Carrolade@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Sure. But a kill switch might warrant some additional investment. It’s not like your other features.

          Assuming the kill switch is a real kill switch, and not just casually shutting things down in a way where they can easily be turned back on.

    • chiisana@lemmy.chiisana.net
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      7 months ago

      Geopolitics aside, the technical architecture implementation of this mechanism is really interesting for me. I think over all, having extra ability to disable these systems would prevent US launching attacks against the plants — which could cause spill over local civilian injuries — but there’s just so many more things to consider.

      Is it a dead-man switch style of setup, where if it doesn’t get authorization from HQ after some time, it will stop working? Or is it a kill switch style of setup, where they can remotely issue a command to stop operation? Because different vectors then come up depending on the securing method. For example: Dead-man switch might be tricked/overcame by turning back the clock, whereas kill switch might be circumvented by severing the network connection before the command could be issued (literally cut the underwater cables before they start the invasion).

      How is the mechanism itself secured? If it is certificate based like everything else, then we’d have to worry about the certificate signing authority getting pressured into signing certificates by state backed actors.

      Would really love to learn about the setup one day after all these is over, to learn about the thinkings that’s been done on such an important piece of … “infrastructure”?

    • Wahots@pawb.social
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      7 months ago

      They’d have everything to lose. Everyone wants those machines. Disabling or destroying those machines is like slashing the only nice life raft on the open ocean. Sure, there are others, but they have cracked rubber and don’t seem as firm. Bleeding edge fabs are the oil of the 21st century.

  • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    7 months ago

    i assume by disable they probably mean, something along the lines of irreversibly contaminating the whole of the assembly line.

    I’d be curious to know how specifically they’re going about this.

      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 months ago

        i mostly asked because other people would almost certainly have better ideas.

        Besides, if whatever they’re doing wouldn’t stand up to “being public knowledge” it’s not a very sound plan lmao.

          • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            7 months ago

            no, you’re thinking about it wrong. The whole point of a doomsday machine is useless if it’s countered by simply being known about.

            China knowing how TSMC has their delete key working, shouldn’t make a fucking difference, on whether or not it works. If it does, it’s not a very good delete key, because china probably already knows how it works, as well as the US.

            • Entropywins@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

              You need to watch Dr. Strangelove or: how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb by Stanley Kubrik friend.

              • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                7 months ago

                probably, i’m just repeating standard rules of security practice though. If it’s only secure because someone doesn’t know about it. It’s not secure.

                I highly doubt TSMC is doing anything less than the state of the art practices with regards to this problem.

        • JamesTBagg@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Or, this sounds like tactical planning in case of an invasion, to prevent access of valuable resources to the invaders. Making it “need to know” makes perfect sense.

          • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            7 months ago

            yeah but that’s the problem though. It shouldn’t matter, why do you think the US is public about where it’s nuclear reactors are located?

            Why do you think every country with nuclear weapons is open about having them? It’s not because it’s a detriment if others know about it, it’s a detriment if others have them.

            China knowing about it merely makes it a MAD system. China knowing how it works would ensure that it’s almost impossible for them to actually take over the plant, assuming TSMC isn’t hiring idiots to run opsec.

      • nova_ad_vitum@lemmy.ca
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        7 months ago

        Well that’s less fun than detcord or mission impossible style self-immolating electronics.

        • aname@lemmy.one
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          7 months ago

          Yes, but Taiwan is not China and they need to be able to do that even if there are people in the building.

      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 months ago

        i wonder if this also includes trying to physically damage the machinery in order to ensure one hell of a time getting it back online, because theoretically once you wipe it, you can just start smashing shit together that shouldn’t be smashed together lol.

        • Jimmyeatsausage@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          What would be better is polluting the software with invalid but still plausible constraints, so the chips would seem OK and might work for days or weeks but would fail in the field… especially if these chips are used in weapon systems or critical infrastructure.

          • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            7 months ago

            this is, decent. The problem here is that it’s almost always easier to reverse engineer a system that’s partially constructed, than it is one that’s completely deconstructed.

            You would ideally want to delete ALL software, and ALL hardware running that software, that would be MUCH harder to reverse engineer. Or at the very least, significantly more expensive.

            although i imagine building chips to fail is almost an impossible thing. Cpus almost never die, unless you blow them up with too much power lol.

    • RGB3x3@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      They could probably overload the circuitry to make it unusable. Or use like, IDK, mini explosives?

      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 months ago

        true, you could just blast the ever living shit out the circuitry, rendering it completely non functional. That’s another good one for sensors and shit as well.

        • PenisWenisGenius@lemmynsfw.com
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          7 months ago

          I would like to think we’re further away from losing most modern technology than the world’s only chip factory getting struck by lightning but the world is a fickle place I guess

          • emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works
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            7 months ago

            There are something like a hundred chip factories across the world. TSMC itself has around 20 (mostly in Taiwan). One dying would definitely raise prices, but we won’t be losing ‘most modern technology’. And of course they’d have lightning cables; they aren’t idiots.

              • emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works
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                7 months ago

                Yes, TSMC makes the chips for iPhones, as well as Snapdragon processors used by many (but not all) high-end Android phones. Samsung has their own factory in South Korea, and Huawei has theirs in mainland China. Further, low-end smartphones and most dumbphones use Unisoc chips that are made in China.

                As for desktop computers, Intel has factories in the US, and AMD (GlobalFoundries) in Germany and Singapore.

          • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            7 months ago

            they almost certainly have lightning prevention measures on those fab buildings. It’d be stupid for them not to, stupid to the tune of 10s of billions of dollars, and a global collapse of the chip market.

          • Richard@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            First of all, it’s not the “world’s only chip factory”. Maybe for some bleeding edge node like 2 nm, but most photolithography systems use larger feature sizes. Secondly, lightnings haven’t been an issue anymore for more than a hundred years now.

    • extant@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Probably wipe the firmware of the machines so they can’t be used.

      (Fun fact: FIRMware is the in-between of HARDware and SOFTware.)

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      What happened if… purely hypothetically… China develops competitive chip fabrication plants that exports at scales rivalrious to Taiwan.

      And then fear of an invasion provokes detonation of Taiwan’s own facilities.

      Wouldn’t this turn China into a domestically source monopoly of high end chips?

      • nandeEbisu@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        It’s easier said than done. A few key pieces took decades to figure out and even now many can only be produced by one or two companies, like ASML.

          • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            Marketing terms mean nothing. SMIC’s nodes are nowhere near the real transistor density of TSMC’s or even Intel’s.

            But what’s worse than that are the yields. I don’t believe we have public numbers on their newest node yet, but their self-reported yields on their “7nm” process as of late 2022 was a pathetic 10-15%. TSMC’s 7nm yield (and you should remember that TSMC’s 7nm is vastly superior to SMIC’s) was getting over 70% yield when it was in pre-production trialing.

                • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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                  7 months ago

                  The Chinese firms are end running US sanctions with improved technologies and your response seems to be “But their chips aren’t as good so it doesn’t count”.

                  Nevermind the rapid pace of development or the fact that only TSMC and Samsung seems capable of matching it.

                  The idea that Chinese manufacturers need Taiwan is demonstrably false.

      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 months ago

        well for one, it would take probably 10 or 20 years to get to that point in chinas domestic manufacturing. As well as geopolitical situation.

        They would have very little reason to invade taiwan at that point. So they probably wouldn’t.

        And to foil your plan a little bit, the US has spent billions of dollars in recent years constructing new TSMC and i believe intel fabs in america, there’s a big one in arizona. And idk where the other one is off the top of my head. But we’re already chinas biggest competition in that regard.

        • ItsMeSpez@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          They would have very little reason to invade taiwan at that point. So they probably wouldn’t.

          Not about actually needing a reason to invade, it’s about the implication

          • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            7 months ago

            i guess but even then it would still have massive political implications, including the US, which is incredibly messy. And taiwan itself wouldn’t be very happy about it.

            Extrinsic factors are the most important ones for this kind of stuff, it’s why the vietnam war failed for us.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Israel grants Intel $3.2 billion for new $25 billion chip plant

          But Intel has long since fallen behind the pack of semiconductor manufacturers. If they could just do their own Taiwanese foundry, they’d have done it by now and reaped comparable boosts in revenue.

          As it stands, China is the majority manufacturer of semiconductors - responsible for more than half of all chips produced - because they’re building foundries far faster and at higher quality than their American peers at Intel.

          Taiwan is the only country keeping pace with China. Losing them would only strengthen the Chinese export market.

          • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            7 months ago

            As it stands, China is the majority manufacturer of semiconductors - responsible for more than half of all chips produced - because they’re building foundries far faster and at higher quality than their American peers at Intel.

            the reason why they produce half of all semi conductors, probably has more to do with the type of semi conductors they produce, mainly IC chips. As opposed to things like CPUs and GPUs, they’ve only recently started getting into that space. The intels and TSMCs of the world produce highly optimized designs and fab processes specifically for things like CPUs and GPUs.

            A chip with 8 and gates on it is probably vastly easier to produce than an 8088 cpu, for example.

        • Defaced@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          They already are, Intel is building new foundries in NA with government funding specifically for the purpose of not relying on Taiwan for chips. The problem though is TSMC has the smallest and most efficient chip dies, so everyone wants those chips, Intel still has a ways to catch up.

  • Jaysyn@kbin.social
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    7 months ago

    Just disable?

    I’ve heard for years now that they have those chip fabs rigged to explode, as to not let them fall into China’s hands.

    • Omgboom@lemmy.zip
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      7 months ago

      The US Army War College published a paper outlining the plan awhile back.

      To 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. This 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 China’s most important supplier.

        • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
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          7 months ago

          Of course not. There’s glory, there’s internal CCP politics, pooh bear’s ego, claims over the South China Sea, reducing the US sphere of influence, the fulfilled narrative of a “united China”, etc.

          China doesn’t stand to gain anything pragmatic by invading Taiwan. However humans, and dictators in particular, do not always act perfectly rationally and in the best interest of their nation.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Taiwan presents the same kind of military threat to China as Cuba presented to the US during the Cold War.

          It’s an excellent staging ground for bombing and the mountainous terrain to the west guards it from effective retaliation.

          Even without a big chip factory, it presents an existential threat to the mainland only really matched by Korea or the Philippines.

      • mohammed_alibi@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I seriously doubt chips is the most important thing. Its more about Taiwan’s geographic location, being a part of the first island chain / line of defense. And just the fact that CCP has been claiming it for a while and don’t want to lose face (internally) by giving it up.

        Also as a Taiwanese, fuck the scorched earth strategy. I rather the island be preserved for generations to come. The longest Chinese dynasty was Zhou Dynasty for ~800 years, but that was 1046 to 256 B.C.E., then Han Dynasty for ~400 years. It would totally suck ass and I rather not have that happen. But I believe the CCP will eventually come to pass anyway. None of us will be here if it was for 400 years, but I would hope Taiwan will still be around and just as beautiful and great in the far future. I’m hoping the CCP will disband yesterday.

        • frezik@midwest.social
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          7 months ago

          An invasion would be incredibly costly, and would accomplish . . . what exactly? A final resolution to a civil war that barely anyone has a living memory of?

          China wants TSMC. Rigging the whole thing to blow in the event of an invasion, and making it very public and very obvious that this is what will happen and cannot be stopped, is the best strategy to avoid that invasion.

          • m0darn@lemmy.ca
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            7 months ago

            (…) and would accomplish . . . what exactly?

            It would move China’s adversary further from its shores. Just like how America doesn’t like Cuba being right there, with its rival politico- economic system, China doesn’t like Taiwan being right there with its rival politico- economic system.

            China wants TSMC

            I agree that they want TSMC, but I think Taiwan’s semi conductor disablement plan has more to do with guaranteeing international support for Taiwan than reducing the incentives for Chinese annexation of Taiwan.

            What I mean is that Beijing can’t say to the world “this is an internal disagreement that doesn’t concern you” because if TSMC goes up in smoke the global economy is going to bottom out, it concerns everybody’s economy. The fact that Beijing can’t just seamlessly assume control of Taiwan means that the international community will not support that ambition. It’s like Real Politik, but with semiconductors.

            Ironically USA initiatives to protect itself from the vulnerability of Taiwan by (re?)patriating chip production will be bad for Taiwan’s security… if they ever actually manage to rival TSMC’s Taiwanese production. I say this because it will demote the conflict from one of global interest to just regional interest.

            But that’s all just my arm chair speculation, I don’t actually have any idea what I’m talking about.

        • Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          7 months ago

          It doesn’t seem like the suggestion would be to destroy cultural landmarks, or even the majority of commercial ones, just the key components of the island’s chipmaking industry that would incentivize an invasion by mainland China. It’s an outcome that no one wants, but remains sufficiently feasible so as to be effective in preventing such an invasion in the first place. If the current CCP is bad, one that directly controls the majority of the world’s chipmaking industry would be far worse.

        • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          7 months ago

          I rather the island be preserved for generations to come.

          im assuming they mean scorched earth economically, not in terms of like, fauna.

          The primary benefit of capturing territory is using it to make money. And generate products and goods/services.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Also as a Taiwanese, fuck the scorched earth strategy.

          I’ve seen people called Wumao for suggesting the collective suicide of the island was somehow less preferable than Hong Kong style reincorporation.

          Folks are so terrified of Chinese rule that they’d rather kill themselves than endure it.

        • abhibeckert@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          CCP has been claiming it for a while

          “A while” as in about 400 years — that’s when China took over Taiwan.

          After World War II, there was a power struggle between the Republic of China (backed by the USA) and the Chinese Communist Party (backed by Russia).

          The ROC/US controlled pretty much all of China, but then the US withdrew support and simultaneously granted concessions to Japan (as part of the peace deal between Japan and the US) and the CCP/Russia took advantage. The resulting civil war “ended” with the ROC having control of Taiwan, and the CCP controlling all of the rest of China.

          But that civil war never really ended - it merely cooled down and became non-military conflict.

          • mohammed_alibi@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            The CCP doesn’t exist 400 years ago. The CCP is not China. That’s what they want you to think. It is really just a political faction that has taken the rest of the country hostage. For all I know the CCP members could be lizard people based on their inhumanity.

            The ROC (originally KMT since it was also a one party state) has just as much rights to claim Taiwan as the CCP, and probably more, because they’ve actually ruled it.

            • Natanael@slrpnk.net
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              7 months ago

              Interestingly enough it’s the same kind of historical relationship with Russia and Ukraine, where Russia claims rights over Ukraine due to “shared history”, when in fact the details of that history supports Ukraine claiming Russia instead.

          • Richard@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            The U.S. did not grant any “concessions” to Japan, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally, and rightfully so, it is good that the free world eliminated that maniacal genocidal regime.

        • masquenox@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Its more about Taiwan’s geographic location

          I have to agree. China’s colonization drive in Africa is a long term deal - and that means that Taiwan blocks China’s ability to exert control over the Indian Ocean (which will eventually become a necessity to enforce said colonization). China can play the waiting game now in Africa while the US and France wear each other out waging proxy wars neither of them can win in the long run… but eventually it will start exerting more direct control.

    • zbyte64@awful.systems
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      7 months ago

      First day of job training is to keep the one machine running that keeps the place from exploding.

  • Wilzax@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    “Disable” like we disabled Iranian uranium enrichment centrifuges?

    • Sgt_choke_n_stroke@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Even if it’s disabled, like do you really think they’d just install their own OS? Or find away around the part that’s disabled? Like you can still jail break an iPhone

      • abhibeckert@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        AFAIK the optics have to be regularly cleaned, calibrated and replaced. And by regularly, I mean daily/weekly for some of that.

        The process is a carefully guarded trade secret and intentionally difficult. The companies that own the machines are not allowed to have employees who are trained in the process. When you buy those machines it comes with a service contract from the manufacturer. And the manufacturer is ASML - a Dutch company.

        • Sgt_choke_n_stroke@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Again, if THATS the case, then you just find your own parameters and experiment with your pwn till its right. You don’t give up on the last car on earth if you’re a mechanic and they took the battery out. You find another that’s compatible or research how you could make your own.

          Saying that a “company” with “trade secrets” is just a dumb patent road block to scare off consumers

          • Richard@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            You underestimate how extremely complex semiconductor photolithography is. It is the most complex manufacturing process ever conceived by humans to produce the most complex systems ever built by humans.

          • Zoot@reddthat.com
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            7 months ago

            China afaik is currently doing exactly that, as well as a few companies in the United States. Its not something just as easy as “experimenting yourself” (although, that is a very simplified way to look at it.) This is decades of research, with billions of dollars. Countries like China can socialize some of these aspects, and seems to be doing very well. It still takes time and money, and research. All the while, the current leading companies are still also furthering their own research.

          • gian @lemmy.grys.it
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            7 months ago

            The fact is these are high tech machines. To follow your example with the car, you don’t need to replace the battery but an ECU, for which there are no available design and you have no idea how to build it.
            Add to this that probably if you make a mistake in your try, you destroy the machine.

            Basically what ASLM is saying is that they can brick the machine with a software update and even if not bricked the machine cannot run long without specialized maintenance and spare parts (that they obviously will not provide anymore). True, China can try to clone them, but even if/when understand how to make them, you then need to make them, a thing which seems out of question for now for China (else they already would have such machines).

      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 months ago

        i would assume it’s intended to be irreversible, like contamination to the point of permanent dysfunction. Though im not sure how that would be possible, i assume it is.

  • fubarx@lemmy.ml
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    7 months ago

    Media: So… you know those high-tech chipmaking machines? The ones banned for sale to China. The ones needed to make the processors for phones, cars, TVs, and AI servers. What happens if China invades Taiwan? Doesn’t Taiwan have a lot of those machines?

    Manufacturer: not a problem.

    Media: Phew. Glad that’s settled… Say, how come?

    Manufacturer: (slaps the roof of the $250M machine). We can lock this baby remotely. In fact, here’s the remote (pulls out a keyfob).

    Media: OK, cool, cool.

    Techies of the world: WHAT THE ACTUAL FU… !!!

    • lad@programming.dev
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      7 months ago

      Techies: what if it bricks accidentally?

      Manufacturer: *spinning the key fob* we didn’t think that far, to be honest

      A few moments later

      Manufacturer: *proceeds to drop the remote and accidentally bricks everything*

    • unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de
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      7 months ago

      This is entirely expected to any computer avid person tho no? Its like all computerized things today. Military equipment, trains, tractors, cars, web services, phones etc. Everything is backdoored and remotely controllable.

  • corroded@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    This is a good thing, but it’s hardly unique. Any advanced manufacturing facility will have remote access to their equipment in case an operator needs reconfigure it, transfer data, or in this case if they’re invaded by Lesser Taiwan.

    • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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      7 months ago

      I’m assuming “disable” in this case is slightly more than just turning it off. I wouldn’t be surprised if the building isn’t left standing after it’s “disabled” here.

    • ReluctantMuskrat@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      I hope its a little better than remote access to disable. Internet access can be knocked out and cell signals jammed. Hopefully they’ve gorba deadman switch and disable things immediately in the event of an invasion.

    • toasteecup@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      West Taiwan friend. Lesser sounds odd when it’s more populated and geographically larger. Though inferior sounds fitting

  • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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    7 months ago

    The question is if their remote disable will be triggered before the US blows the factory up anyway.

    • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Just add some brown people and throw a wedding. The factory will be leveled within hours.

      • circuscritic@lemmy.ca
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        7 months ago

        You know what doesn’t convince people to rethink how they view America, or empire?

        Arbitrarily inserting comments like that into topics where they’re disconnected and off topic.

        Wait a minute…are you a DoD contractor whose mission it is to make any critic of America look whiney and detached from reality?

          • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            Mitch McConnell’s wife and Trump’s Secretary of Labor - Elaine Chao - is from a family of enormously wealthy Taiwanese shipping magnets.

            California is flush with Taiwanese-born politicians, business owners, and investors.

            Taiwanese’s ruling class goes to school in the US, owns property in the US, and has a very friendly relationship with the American financial system.

            I would put them more on par with Israel than, say, the Philippines or some Latin American Banana Republic. They’ve got much more influence over us than a traditional client state like Puerto Rico or Guam.

  • Hugh_Jeggs@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    Ha ha being British I read “chip-making machines” totally differently and thought “Bit harsh”

    • SineIraEtStudio@midwest.social
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      7 months ago

      My understanding is that some of the benefits China would get from invading Taiwan is the control of Taiwan’s world-leading semiconductor industry. So making it public knowledge that any invading force (i.e. China) would not be able to take over their production capabilities is a small deterrent.

      • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        That’s what some analysts say but I really don’t think China cares. They want the land (*it’s strategically important for naval operations) and a unified China.

        • Joncash2@lemmy.ml
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          7 months ago

          This is true, China doesn’t care. I’m actually confused about the narrative around China wanting to take TSMC. Even the most cursory glace at the situation should make it obvious this isn’t one of China’s goals. This is because these EUV machines don’t work on magic. They work on knowledge and spare parts. Even in the unlikely scenario that China somehow invades and these machines aren’t destroyed by either China or the retreating Taiwanese, they aren’t going to be able to operate them and more importantly get spare parts to keep them running. They’d at best be used to disassemble and review.

          All of this ignores the fact that China is already at 5nm using their own equipment anyway. For the extra 2nm of difference between TSMC’s 3nm to SMIC’s 5nm isn’t large enough to rationalize anything close to what they’re talking about. It’d be cheaper to just keep subsidizing the Chinese industry rather than invading.

          All of this is to say, that China may or may not invade, but TSMC isn’t on the list of reasons. If anything, it’s on the opposite end. China has a LOT of motivation to bomb TSMC to prevent the west from getting chips as if TSMC is gone, then suddenly Chinese 5nm are pretty much the most advanced chips in the world (besides Samsung). Thus, the real conclusion is we need to invest in Samsung, which surprisingly isn’t happening for whatever reason is beyond me.

          • DaPorkchop_@lemmy.ml
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            7 months ago

            Keep in mind that the “nm” in the different company’s lithography process names are basically just marketing at this point, and don’t reflect anything meaningful about the actual size of transistors. As far as I know, we don’t really know much about China’s latest “5nm” process and how it actually compares to others.

          • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            And even if they did get the machines in working order, yay it’ll be relevant for 5 to maybe 10 years before tech goes up.

            • Ahri Boy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              7 months ago

              Chinese GPUs need to be tested thoroughly across AAA titles, Linux. Imagine playing Genshin or Wuthering Waves with those GPUs.

        • lad@programming.dev
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          7 months ago

          They want power and influence, I don’t think they care too much (or at all) about their citizens be it divided or united. Unless those citizens add to power or influence, of course

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Taiwan’s world-leading semiconductor industry

        China already produces over 50% of the world’s semiconductors.

    • catloaf@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      Is it not obvious? To discourage Chinese invasion.

      China wants Taiwan’s technology and manufacturing. If they destroy it, China will gain nothing.

  • NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Message to China: don’t, because you would not find nothing here anyway.

    Message to everybody else: y’all better help China with their decision, or else!!