Silversky615 t1_j081eu0 wrote
Reply to comment by fettuccine- in Japan to Manufacture 2nm Chips With a Little Help From IBM by Avieshek
The distance is irrelevant since it is an island. Russia hasn’t been able to take Ukraine and that’s a country right along their borders.
Trying to stage a D-Day invasion where each landing craft has thousands of soldiers in the age of accurate anti ship missiles is a death sentence.
TheArmoredKitten t1_j0839e6 wrote
Yeah it's just not physically possible to get the equipment for a conventional ground invasion into Taiwan. They'd have to do some kind of absolutely balls to the wall combined arms assault that perfectly coordinates an airborne invasion behind the beach defenses with the amphibious invasion, but even that would still probably fail gloriously as all those unsupported paratroopers would just be ripped to shreds by inland defenses and never even reach the objective.
Silversky615 t1_j083yj3 wrote
While a military invasion is unlikely I wonder what the likely hood of a Chinese blockade of Taiwan would be. I assume they will keep doing what they are already doing which is try to gain influence in Taiwan politically, but they messed that plan up after what they did to Hong Kong.
JelloSquirrel t1_j091lqh wrote
China wouldn't invade unless Xi is a true idiot.
China would subvert an election or bribe the military to do a coup supported by their special forces.
Eedat t1_j0866f7 wrote
They wouldnt dare touch large powers like the US or EU. They went full paper tiger about the Nancy Pelosi visit and the US just didn't care and did it anyway.
Taiwanese opinion on mainland China plummeted after they saw how Hong Kong was treated. Short term influence would be hard to gain
Pierogi_Master t1_j0875da wrote
Dexter Filkins talked about this on NPR Fresh Air recently. From memory a bit ago but basically as an island lots of things are imported, including the means of energy production. The island could be without power within a week or so of a blockade at the cost of 0 Chinese lives.
Elsewhere in the interview its mentioned that in war games the US simulates in an escalation that the US loses. One official stated we (the US) simply don't have the industrial base to manage a sustained conflict against the Chinese.
Silversky615 t1_j089cr2 wrote
I feel like these simulations never account for the advantage that absolute technological supremacy has. Similar to how with Russia the West would run out of shells in a very short amount of time, but who needs shells when they can not even begin to counter America’s full Air Force.
Pierogi_Master t1_j08b9bk wrote
These are run by the upper echelon of the Pentagon and others in DoD who WOULD take those things and others you (myself, and the public) dont know about into account.
TheArmoredKitten t1_j085esz wrote
The US would never stand for an actual blockade. It's too important to our interests and the USN would be leveling guns before Chinese ships even left port. If China so much as sneezed in the direction of an American commerical ship, Xi Jinping would find himself at the bottom of a crater before the end of the month.
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