This is a bunch of words around "it would be inconvenient for us because we allowed ourselves to become economically dependent on a criminal state". In particular Germany gets a gold (red?) star for shutting down their nuclear plants.
Meanwhile the Chinese Communist Party has to be enjoying this. If we can't agree to take the relatively minor hit of financially cutting Russia off from the civilized world, we'll obviously be unwilling to do anything significant when they invade Taiwan.
TSMC probably already has all their facilities mined.
It doesn't take much, to turn a fab into a junk heap. You just need to break the clean room containment, and you have a billion dollars' worth of permanently useless garbage.
Heck, just turning off power would probably do it, but they'd want to be sure.
I actually have a story, from the company I worked for, that supplied lithography stuff (big, expensive steppers).
They need to maintain clean room standards from the first framing, to the final delivery (special airplanes and trains).
They delivered a set of them to a company that then went belly-up.
The power was turned off, and the equipment became junk.
TSMS is not the reason China wants Taiwan, and there is more to Taiwan than TSMC: a wonderful people, a thriving liberal democracy, and great local culture, for example. I understand why there is so much focus on HN on TSMC, but it's disheartening to observe the lack of realization that we are not just talking about a fab on a rock, but about human beings.
People, in general (not just HN geeks), tend to have difficulty looking at other folks as “human.” This applies to our next-door neighbors; let alone, people in a distant nation.
Meanwhile the Chinese Communist Party has to be enjoying this. If we can't agree to take the relatively minor hit of financially cutting Russia off from the civilized world, we'll obviously be unwilling to do anything significant when they invade Taiwan.