Semiconductor manufacturers in Taiwan can remotely disable their chip-making machines in the event of a Chinese invasion.
Bloomberg - Are you a robot?
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.
Probably wiping process control code from the systems that contain tons of fiddly hard to find constants and other information.
Well that's less fun than detcord or mission impossible style self-immolating electronics.
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.
I'm really hoping for thermite. A lot of thermite.
thermites a good one, not quite instantaneous, but still pretty good.
Would certainly be a good counter for hardware.
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?
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.
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.
The US will rebuild their chip manufacturing somewhere else
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.
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.
If they attack Taiwan and let the chip factories burn. Does that mean they only cared about getting the land?
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.
First day of job training is to keep the one machine running that keeps the place from exploding.
"Disable" like we disabled Iranian uranium enrichment centrifuges?
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
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.
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.
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..... !!!
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
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.
Why I stay away from modern tech
I mean, I’d say that too even if untrue, if I were in their position.
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.
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.
This sounds more like a deadman switch.
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.
China should just replicate Taiwan somewhere like they replicate Paris, Venice, etc. and call it a day.
China already had 53% global market share in semiconductors back in 2020
West Taiwan friend. Lesser sounds odd when it's more populated and geographically larger. Though inferior sounds fitting
The question is if their remote disable will be triggered before the US blows the factory up anyway.
Just add some brown people and throw a wedding. The factory will be leveled within hours.
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?
Neo-scorched earth policy.
Ha ha being British I read "chip-making machines" totally differently and thought "Bit harsh"
Why the hell would they advertise this is beyond me...
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.
It's a small deterrent for China but a bigger incentive for other countries to defend Taiwan.
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.
Taiwan’s world-leading semiconductor industry
China already produces over 50% of the world's semiconductors.
Is it not obvious? To discourage Chinese invasion.
China wants Taiwan's technology and manufacturing. If they destroy it, China will gain nothing.
Just like how I would like to advertise my new course on PUA and dating. Shameless plug I know, but I do believe the majority of humanity can get some real value out of this. I used to be an incel but through hard work, I finally figured out the truth via the red pill community and now run a Taiwanian haram of 12 Asian women (DM me if you're asian and want to join, or want the link to the course)
Oh yeah to answer your question. It's for the security and maintainability of the chinese government, pretty clever if you ask me. Now if I could remote control my wife(s)
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!!
The article is available only for registered user; does someone has the source please?
The flip side of this is that hackers can brick the same machines.....
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.
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.
Stuxnet would like to have a word
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.
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.
Oh come on.... this isn't just a scrap metal press.
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”?
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.