The lack of a U.S. carrier in the Pacific may be short-lived if the Navy deploys another in the next couple of months. But it shows how the open-ended operations with Iran are running some American sailors ragged, analysts say, while the Trump administration further retreats from the Asia-Pacific region and focuses on the Western Hemisphere.
“The administration says that the Pacific is supposed to be the most important behind the Western Hemisphere,” said Greg Poling, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Instead, the U.S. is “doing the exact opposite” of its previously expressed goal of pulling out of the Middle East.
It’s a war. Factories get destroyed, skilled workers die. There’s no way China invades and chip production continues without a hitch all the way through. Even in the best case scenario I expect years of lowered outputs.
The question was why prices would go up after China had control of the chip factories. That’s an entirely separate question from how many of the chip factories would survive.
But it’s also crazy to think that China would invade with boots on the ground. They’ve shown repeatedly that they can enforce 100% naval blockades on a moments notice and keep it up as long as they like. They can literally go back to medieval tactics and win via siege. That keeps Chinese military assets and personnel safe while also preserving infrastructure.
You’re absolutely right that it almost certainly wouldn’t continue without a hitch. The blockade would stop all the raw material shipments and all the exports. Despite claims that Taiwan would blow up the factories themselves, I don’t see why they would; once a takeover was underway blowing them up wouldn’t serve as a deterrent but it would remove the ability to use them for negotiations.